Do Peas Have Vitamin K? Amounts and Health Facts

Peas do contain vitamin K, and in meaningful amounts. A typical serving of pea seeds provides roughly 30 to 45 micrograms of phylloquinone (vitamin K1) per 100 grams, which is a decent contribution toward the daily recommended intake for most adults.¹ That puts peas solidly in the moderate range for vitamin K among common vegetables and legumes, not as high as leafy greens but far from negligible. What makes peas especially interesting is the broader nutritional package they come wrapped in and how their vitamin K content behaves during cooking, freezing, and digestion.

How Much Vitamin K Is Actually in a Serving of Peas

The numbers vary somewhat depending on the type of pea and how it was grown, but research consistently places pea seeds in the range of about 30 to 45 micrograms of phylloquinone per 100 grams.¹ For context, the adequate intake level set for vitamin K is 90 micrograms per day for adult women and 120 micrograms per day for adult men. So a 100-gram serving of peas could cover roughly a quarter to a half of that daily target, depending on your sex and the specific peas you’re eating.

That’s a respectable amount, especially when you consider that peas aren’t the only source of vitamin K in a typical meal. If you toss peas into a stir-fry with broccoli or serve them alongside a leafy salad, the combined vitamin K content adds up quickly. Peas also deliver this vitamin K alongside a broader set of nutrients: they’re notable for their protein content (around 20 to 40 percent of their dry weight), starch, dietary fiber, folate, vitamin C, iron, and manganese.¹ So they’re pulling more than their weight nutritionally, with vitamin K as one piece of a fairly complete micronutrient profile.

One thing worth noting: the vitamin K in peas is phylloquinone, or K1, which is the form plants produce. This is different from the menaquinones (K2 forms) found in fermented foods and some animal products. Both forms participate in the same essential clotting functions, but they have somewhat different roles when it comes to bone and cardiovascular health, which we’ll get to shortly.

What Happens to Vitamin K When You Cook Peas

If you’re eating fresh or dried peas, you’re almost certainly cooking them first. That raises a practical question: does the heat destroy the vitamin K? The answer depends on the method. Research on legumes and vegetables found that phylloquinone levels in legumes ranged from about 31 to 91 micrograms per 100 grams, and boiling reduced the true retention of that vitamin K.² In plain terms, when you boil peas, some of the vitamin K leaches into the cooking water and gets poured down the drain.

Interestingly, the same study found that for most vegetables (as opposed to legumes specifically), methods like blanching, steaming, and grilling actually increased the measurable phylloquinone content.² This probably happens because cooking breaks down plant cell walls, releasing vitamin K from inside the cells and making it more available for measurement and absorption. The difference between legumes and leafy vegetables in this regard likely comes down to structure: legumes like peas have denser, starchier tissue, and when they’re submerged in boiling water, more of the vitamin K migrates out.

The practical takeaway: if maximizing vitamin K from your peas matters to you, steaming them rather than boiling is the better bet. When you do boil peas, using the cooking liquid in a soup or sauce will recapture some of the lost nutrients. And if you eat peas raw or barely blanched, as you might with fresh snap peas or garden peas in a salad, you’re likely retaining the most phylloquinone.

Frozen Peas Hold Up Well

Frozen peas are one of the most popular vegetables in the freezer aisle, and the good news is that freezing doesn’t appear to hurt their vitamin K content. Research on frozen storage of vegetables found that vitamin K1 remained stable regardless of storage temperature, a finding attributed to the fact that no known enzyme degrades phylloquinone and the molecule itself is chemically quite robust.³ While that particular study looked at leeks and Brussels sprouts rather than peas directly, the underlying chemistry applies broadly: phylloquinone doesn’t break down easily in frozen conditions because there’s simply no enzymatic or chemical pathway that attacks it at those temperatures.

This makes peas somewhat unusual among vegetables. Many vitamins, particularly vitamin C and some B vitamins, degrade over time in frozen storage. Phylloquinone’s stability means that a bag of frozen peas sitting in your freezer for months will deliver roughly the same vitamin K as the day it was packaged. If you’re relying on peas as a regular part of your vitamin K intake, buying frozen is perfectly fine from a nutritional standpoint.

Why Vitamin K Matters for Your Bones

The reason most people associate vitamin K with blood clotting is that the “K” in the vitamin’s name literally comes from the German word “Koagulation.” But the vitamin’s role in bone health has been the subject of growing research interest. Vitamin K is needed to activate a protein called osteocalcin, which helps incorporate calcium into bone tissue. The activation step is called carboxylation, and without enough vitamin K, a larger fraction of your osteocalcin stays in its inactive, undercarboxylated form.

Research has shown that this carboxylation status matters for bone quality. In one study, the ratio of carboxylated osteocalcin to total osteocalcin was positively linked to measurements of bone quality, suggesting that getting enough vitamin K to properly activate osteocalcin may help keep bones strong.⁴ More recent work has fleshed this out further, finding that the different forms of osteocalcin, fully carboxylated, undercarboxylated, and fully uncarboxylated, each have distinct relationships with bone. Carboxylated osteocalcin was tied to greater bone strength and favorable bone geometry, while the uncarboxylated form was associated with markers of bone loss.⁵

Supplementation trials have found that higher doses of phylloquinone are needed to push osteocalcin toward its fully carboxylated, active form. In one dose-response study, participants taking 1,000 micrograms of phylloquinone saw a significantly greater reduction in undercarboxylated osteocalcin compared to those taking 500 micrograms, suggesting that the amount of vitamin K needed for optimal bone protein activation may be higher than what’s required for basic clotting function.⁶ This is an important nuance: the daily adequate intake values were originally set based on clotting, not on bone health. Some researchers believe the true optimal intake for skeletal benefits is higher than current recommendations suggest.

What does this mean for peas specifically? A serving of peas won’t deliver 1,000 micrograms of phylloquinone on its own. But as part of a diet that consistently includes green vegetables and legumes, peas contribute to the total pool of vitamin K that feeds these bone-protective pathways. Nobody should expect a single food to carry the load alone.

Vitamin K and Your Arteries

Beyond bones, vitamin K plays a critical role in keeping arteries flexible. The key player here is a protein called matrix Gla-protein, or MGP. This protein is one of the body’s most important defenses against calcium deposits building up in blood vessel walls, a process called vascular calcification that contributes to cardiovascular disease. MGP is widely recognized as a potent inhibitor of arterial calcification, and no effective alternative mechanism appears to exist in the vasculature for doing the same job.⁷

Like osteocalcin in bone, MGP needs vitamin K to become activated through carboxylation. When vitamin K status is low, MGP remains in an inactive form, and inactive MGP has been repeatedly associated with accelerated vascular calcification.⁸ This relationship is especially concerning for people with chronic kidney disease, who tend to have lower vitamin K levels and higher rates of arterial calcification, but the basic biology applies to everyone. An adequate vitamin K intake helps keep this protective protein functional.

This dual role in both bone and arterial health has led some researchers to describe vitamin K deficiency as a kind of double hit: calcium that should be going into bone is not properly directed there, while calcium that should stay out of artery walls is not being kept out. Foods like peas, which deliver vitamin K alongside other cardiovascular-friendly nutrients like fiber and potassium, slot naturally into dietary patterns aimed at both heart and bone health.

The Warfarin Consideration

If you take warfarin (sold under brand names like Coumadin), the vitamin K content of peas becomes more than just a nutrition fact. Warfarin works by blocking the vitamin K cycle that your liver uses to produce clotting factors. When you eat more vitamin K, you partially counteract the drug’s effect; when you eat less, the drug effect intensifies. Either swing can push your clotting time out of the therapeutic range.

The practical advice from clinicians isn’t to avoid vitamin K-containing foods. It’s to keep your vitamin K intake consistent from day to day so that your warfarin dose can be calibrated to match. If you normally eat a cup of peas three or four times a week, keep doing that. The problem arises when someone who rarely eats green vegetables suddenly goes on a health kick and starts eating large salads with peas, spinach, and broccoli every day, or conversely, stops eating those foods altogether. Either change shifts the vitamin K baseline and destabilizes clotting control.

Peas sit in a helpful middle zone here. They’re significant enough in vitamin K that you should count them, but not so extreme that a single serving dramatically changes the equation the way a large plate of kale or collard greens might. For people on warfarin, including peas in your regular rotation and keeping the amount relatively steady is a sensible approach.

What Your Gut Bacteria Do With Dietary Vitamin K

The story of vitamin K doesn’t end at absorption. Research has shown that gut bacteria can actually remodel dietary vitamin K into different forms. In experiments using labeled vitamin K, researchers found that gut microbes in mice converted dietary vitamin K into longer-chain menaquinones, which are the K2 forms typically associated with bacterial production. Human gut microbes in lab vessels did something similar, but only when given a specific precursor called menadione rather than the complete vitamin K molecule.⁹

This is relevant for pea eaters because it means the phylloquinone (K1) in peas may not stay as K1 after you eat it. Some of it could be transformed by your gut bacteria into menaquinone forms, which have different tissue distributions and potentially different roles in the body. K2 forms, for instance, tend to be better at reaching bone and arterial tissue compared to K1, which the liver preferentially uses for clotting factors.

The research also found that dietary vitamin K influenced the composition of the gut microbial community itself. In other words, the relationship is bidirectional: your gut bacteria change the vitamin K you eat, and the vitamin K you eat helps shape which bacteria thrive in your gut. This is still an emerging area of study, and nobody can yet tell you exactly how much of the K1 from a bowl of peas gets converted to K2 in a given person’s digestive tract. But it adds another layer to why consistent, varied vitamin K intake from whole foods may matter more than chasing a single number.

Fresh Peas, Snow Peas, and Split Peas

When people say “peas,” they might mean several different things, and the vitamin K content varies across types. Green garden peas, the round ones you’d shell from a pod or buy frozen, are the most commonly studied and typically fall in the 30 to 45 microgram range per 100 grams mentioned earlier. Snow peas and sugar snap peas, which you eat pod and all, tend to have slightly different nutrient profiles because you’re consuming the green pod tissue, which contributes its own phylloquinone. Green pod tissue generally contains more vitamin K per weight than the seed alone, so whole-pod varieties may deliver a bit more.

Split peas, the dried and halved variety used in soups, are a different story. Drying and splitting concentrates some nutrients but the processing also removes the green outer tissue where a portion of the phylloquinone resides. Yellow split peas, in particular, have had their green pigmentation largely stripped. Since phylloquinone is associated with chlorophyll-containing plant tissue, the greener the pea, the more vitamin K you can generally expect. A yellow split pea soup will still provide some phylloquinone, but less per serving than the same weight of fresh green peas.

How Peas Compare as a Vitamin K Source

Peas are a moderate source of vitamin K, and setting realistic expectations helps. Leafy greens like kale, spinach, and collard greens can deliver several hundred micrograms per 100-gram serving, dwarfing what peas provide. Broccoli and Brussels sprouts also tend to come in higher. On the other hand, peas provide considerably more vitamin K than most grains, most fruits, and many root vegetables. Carrots, potatoes, corn, and beans like kidney or black beans typically contain very little phylloquinone.

Where peas earn their place is as a reliable, versatile source that shows up in meals where leafy greens might not. You’re more likely to add a handful of peas to fried rice, pasta, or a pot pie than to fold in a cup of raw spinach. This makes peas a practical vehicle for vitamin K in everyday cooking. They’re also extremely accessible year-round in frozen form, and as we saw earlier, freezing doesn’t reduce their vitamin K content. For people who don’t eat large quantities of leafy greens, peas can quietly fill part of the gap.

Growing Conditions and Nutrient Variability

The vitamin K content of any plant food isn’t perfectly fixed. It varies with growing conditions, soil type, sunlight exposure, and fertilization practices. Research on pea cultivation has found that integrated nutrient management, including balanced application of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, affects pea growth and nutrient uptake.¹⁰ While that research looked at mineral uptake rather than vitamin K content specifically, the general principle holds: a well-nourished plant produces more robust tissue, including the chloroplast-rich tissue where phylloquinone is synthesized.

Sunlight matters too, because phylloquinone is part of the photosynthetic machinery in plant cells. Peas grown in full sun typically have greener, more chlorophyll-dense tissue than those grown in shade, and greener tissue means more vitamin K. This is one reason why nutrient databases give ranges rather than single values: the peas from one farm or one season may differ from another. The 30 to 45 microgram range cited by recent reviews is a reasonable estimate for what most people encounter, but individual variation is real.

For home gardeners growing peas, this translates into simple advice: give your pea plants adequate sunlight, water, and well-balanced soil nutrition, and you’ll likely get peas with higher vitamin K content. Harvesting when the peas are bright green and plump, rather than overripe and starchy, may also yield a higher concentration, since the green pigment correlates with phylloquinone presence. None of this will turn peas into a leafy-green-level vitamin K powerhouse, but it nudges the content toward the higher end of the natural range.

When Peas Alone Won’t Be Enough

For people with specific medical conditions that affect vitamin K metabolism, peas and other dietary sources may not be sufficient. People with chronic kidney disease, for example, face a particular challenge because their bodies have difficulty maintaining adequate vitamin K status even with a reasonable dietary intake. The connection to vascular calcification in this population is well-documented, with low vitamin K status repeatedly linked to faster arterial calcium buildup.⁸ For these individuals, supplementation under medical supervision may be warranted beyond what diet alone can provide.

Fat malabsorption conditions, including celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, and chronic pancreatitis, also interfere with vitamin K absorption. Because phylloquinone is fat-soluble, it needs dietary fat and functioning bile to be absorbed efficiently. A person with one of these conditions could eat plenty of peas and still end up deficient. Eating peas with a source of fat, such as butter or olive oil, improves absorption for everyone, but especially for those with borderline absorption capacity.

Certain medications beyond warfarin can also affect vitamin K metabolism. Some antibiotics, particularly broad-spectrum ones taken for extended periods, reduce the gut bacteria that contribute to vitamin K status. Cholestyramine and other bile acid sequestrants can interfere with fat-soluble vitamin absorption. If you’re on any of these medications long term, relying on a moderate vitamin K source like peas without also eating higher-concentration foods or considering supplementation may leave you short.