What Vitamins Does Celery Have? K, C, A and More

Celery delivers a surprisingly broad range of vitamins, with vitamin K leading the pack. A single large stalk provides roughly a quarter of the daily recommended intake for vitamin K, along with meaningful amounts of vitamin C, vitamin A (mostly from beta-carotene), folate, and smaller contributions of several B vitamins. The nutritional picture shifts dramatically depending on whether you eat the pale stalks most people reach for or the leafy tops that often get tossed in the bin.

Vitamin K Leads the Way

If celery has a nutritional calling card, it is vitamin K. A cup of chopped raw celery (about 100 grams) provides roughly 29 micrograms of vitamin K1, also called phylloquinone. That covers about a quarter of the adequate daily intake for most adults. Vitamin K1 is the form found in green plants, and celery is a reliable source of it among common vegetables.

Your body uses vitamin K primarily for blood clotting and for directing calcium into bones rather than soft tissues. People on blood-thinning medications like warfarin are often told to keep their vitamin K intake consistent from day to day. If you eat celery regularly, there is no need to stop, but sharp swings in how much you eat could affect how well the medication works. The vitamin K in celery is fat-soluble, so pairing it with a bit of fat, even something as simple as peanut butter or hummus, helps your body absorb more of it.

Vitamin C in Celery

Celery is not going to compete with citrus or bell peppers for vitamin C bragging rights, but it does contribute. A cup of raw celery contains about 3 milligrams of ascorbic acid, which is modest by any measure. Still, because celery is often eaten raw and in quantity, especially when used as a snack vehicle, those small amounts add up over the course of a day.

What makes celery’s vitamin C content interesting is how sensitive it is to what happens after harvest. Researchers studying minimally processed celery found that its antioxidant power, closely tied to ascorbic acid levels, dropped by about half in the first seven days of refrigerated storage. After that initial dip, levels climbed back and eventually exceeded the starting point by around 30 percent, likely due to stress responses in the cut tissue that ramp up antioxidant production as a defense mechanism.¹ A separate study looking at intact celery pieces saw a similar pattern: ascorbic acid content dipped after the first week of cold storage and then rebounded by day fourteen, with the rebound stronger at slightly warmer storage temperatures.²

The practical takeaway is that your celery’s vitamin C content is probably at its lowest about a week after you buy it, not at the point when it starts to look wilted. If vitamin C matters to you, eating celery within the first few days of purchase or after it has been stored for two weeks gives you the best shot.

Vitamin A and Beta-Carotene

Celery provides vitamin A activity primarily through beta-carotene, the orange pigment that your body converts into retinol. A cup of raw celery stalks delivers about 22 micrograms of retinol activity equivalents, which covers only a couple of percent of daily needs. That is not much. But the stalks are the least interesting part of the plant when it comes to this nutrient.

Celery leaves are a dramatically richer source of beta-carotene than the stalks. Research on the Chinese celery cultivar Jinnanshiqin measured beta-carotene at roughly 400 micrograms per gram of dry weight in the leaf blades, compared with about 100 micrograms per gram in the petioles (the technical term for the stalks). That makes the leaves three to five times more concentrated in beta-carotene at any given growth stage.³ The reason is straightforward: beta-carotene is produced in chloroplasts, and the dark green leaves have far more chloroplast-rich tissue than the pale stalks.

Celery also accumulates lutein, another carotenoid that your body does not convert to vitamin A but that plays a well-established role in eye health. Genetic studies have confirmed that celery carries an active version of the enzyme responsible for routing carotenoid production toward both lutein and beta-carotene.⁴ So the leaves in particular are doing double duty: delivering a vitamin A precursor and a carotenoid that supports your retinas through a separate pathway.

B Vitamins and Folate

Folate is the B vitamin where celery makes its most useful contribution. A cup of raw celery provides about 36 micrograms of folate, which is close to ten percent of the daily value. That puts celery in the same neighborhood as many common vegetables, and well behind dark leafy greens or legumes, but it is enough to be worth noting if you eat celery regularly.

Beyond folate, celery offers small quantities of vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), and pantothenic acid (B5). None of these are present in amounts that would make celery a go-to source, but they are part of the vegetable’s overall profile. Riboflavin and B6 hover around two to three percent of daily needs per cup. If you are counting B vitamins, celery is a modest contributor that adds up alongside everything else in a varied diet rather than standing out on its own.

Why the Leaves Deserve a Place on Your Plate

Most people in Western countries eat celery stalks and discard the tops. That is nutritionally backwards. Across nearly every vitamin and antioxidant metric, celery leaves outperform the stalks by wide margins. The beta-carotene difference alone, three to five times higher in the leaves, has already been noted.³ But vitamin K and vitamin C are also more concentrated in the green parts, as is the case for most vegetables where the chlorophyll-rich tissue carries the heaviest nutritional load.

The flavor of celery leaves is more assertive than the stalks, with a slightly bitter, herbaceous punch that works well chopped into salads, blended into smoothies, or scattered over soups. In many Asian and Middle Eastern cuisines, the leaves are the primary culinary attraction, not an afterthought. If you have been throwing them away, you have been tossing the most vitamin-dense part of the vegetable.

How Light and Storage Change the Vitamin Content

Fresh-cut celery stored in the light retains its vitamin C much better than celery stored in the dark. Researchers found that light exposure resulted in about 46 percent higher ascorbic acid content than dark storage by the end of a six-day trial. Celery kept in light showed a sharp spike in vitamin C at the two-day mark before settling back to prestorage levels, while celery in darkness saw vitamin C decline steadily after the first couple of days.⁵

This is a counterintuitive finding, since many vegetables lose nutrients faster in light. The explanation appears to involve chlorophyll activity in the celery tissue: light keeps the remaining chloroplasts metabolically active, and they continue synthesizing ascorbic acid as a byproduct of photosynthetic activity. In the dark, that synthesis shuts down and existing vitamin C degrades without being replenished.

None of this means you should store your celery on a sunny windowsill. The stalks will also dry out and wilt faster in open air. But it does suggest that the common advice to wrap celery tightly in foil and stash it in the back of the fridge might come at a small cost to vitamin C retention. A compromise is storing celery in a crisper drawer where some ambient refrigerator light still reaches it, and eating it within a few days rather than letting it sit for a week.

Heat treatment matters too. Hot-air blanching of celery, sometimes used in commercial processing, did not significantly alter initial antioxidant levels compared with untreated celery. But immersion in hot water caused an immediate 41 percent drop in antioxidant power, probably because water-soluble compounds like ascorbic acid leached into the liquid.¹ If you cook celery, steaming or sautéing preserves more vitamins than boiling.

Growing Conditions Affect What Ends Up on Your Plate

The vitamin content of celery is not fixed by genetics alone. How and where the plant is grown plays a real role. Research comparing organic and conventional nitrogen fertilizers found that organic fertilization boosted the vitamin C content, total phenol levels, and overall antioxidant activity of the harvested celery.⁶ The likely mechanism is that organic nitrogen sources release nutrients more slowly, which moderates the rapid growth that high-dose synthetic fertilizers promote. Slower growth appears to let the plant invest more in secondary metabolites, the category that includes vitamin C and many antioxidant compounds.

Soil quality, climate, and harvest timing also influence carotenoid levels. The beta-carotene measurements cited earlier showed a clear decline as the celery plant matured: leaves at 30 days after germination had nearly twice the beta-carotene concentration of leaves at 60 days.³ Younger plants are packing more pigment into their leaves, likely because the chloroplasts are at peak metabolic activity early in the growth cycle. By the time celery reaches full commercial size, it has already lost a significant fraction of its carotenoid peak. This is one reason homegrown celery harvested young can be more nutrient-dense than the large, mature stalks sold at supermarkets.

Flavonoids and Bioactive Compounds Beyond Vitamins

Celery’s nutritional value extends well beyond the vitamins listed on a standard nutrition label. The plant is a rich source of two flavonoids, apigenin and luteolin, that have drawn considerable research interest. Apigenin is one of the more abundant flavonoids in the human diet, and celery is among its most concentrated food sources. Luteolin shows up alongside it in smaller but still significant quantities.⁷

In laboratory experiments, celery extracts treated with citric acid and an enzyme to increase the concentration of free apigenin showed the ability to dial down the production of several inflammatory signaling molecules in immune cells. The treated extract reduced the activity of key inflammatory pathways in stimulated mast cells, the immune cells involved in allergic and inflammatory reactions.⁷ Whether eating celery as part of a normal diet delivers enough apigenin to replicate those effects in your body remains an open question, since cell-culture concentrations are typically much higher than what reaches your tissues after digestion. But the epidemiological evidence linking flavonoid-rich diets to lower rates of chronic disease is fairly consistent, and celery contributes meaningfully to that dietary pattern.

Celery also contains polyacetylenes and phthalides, the latter being responsible for its distinctive smell and flavor. These compounds have shown sedative and blood-pressure-lowering effects in animal studies, which is part of why celery has a long history in traditional medicine for cardiovascular complaints. Again, human clinical evidence for these specific effects at dietary doses is thin, but the chemistry is real and actively studied.

Furocoumarins and an Unusual Safety Note

Celery belongs to the Apiaceae family, the same plant family that includes parsley, carrots, and parsnips. One shared trait in this family is the production of furocoumarins, compounds that can cause skin sensitivity to ultraviolet light. This has occasionally raised safety questions, particularly among agricultural workers who handle large volumes of celery and develop skin rashes after sun exposure.

For people simply eating celery, the risk is negligible. A study that had participants consume 300 grams of celery root, which contained a measured furocoumarin level of about 28 micrograms per gram, found no skin reaction after UV exposure. Blood levels of the problematic compounds remained below the analytical detection limit. The researchers estimated that the phototoxic threshold dose for a typical person is roughly equivalent to 15 milligrams of the most potent furocoumarin, and normal dietary consumption of celery falls well below that. The safety margin was estimated at two to ten times the typical intake under normal eating habits.⁸

The one scenario where furocoumarins in celery become more than a footnote is when celery has been stressed by disease or poor storage. Fungal infections can cause celery to ramp up furocoumarin production dramatically, sometimes to levels many times higher than in healthy produce. Visibly diseased or heavily spotted celery is worth avoiding for this reason, beyond the general appeal of eating produce that looks and smells normal. For the vast majority of people eating fresh, healthy celery in ordinary amounts, furocoumarins are not a meaningful concern.

Celery Juice and the Vitamin Reality

The celery juice trend, popularized as a cure-all in certain wellness circles, deserves a reality check from a vitamin perspective. Juicing concentrates some water-soluble nutrients like vitamin C and folate, since you can juice several stalks’ worth into a single glass. But it strips out most of the fiber and discards the pulp, which contains a portion of the carotenoids and flavonoids bound to plant cell walls. You also lose the leaves, which as covered earlier are the most nutrient-dense part of the plant.

A 16-ounce glass of celery juice made from about a pound of celery stalks will give you a solid dose of vitamin K and a respectable amount of folate. Vitamin C will be present but unimpressive compared with a glass of orange juice. Vitamin A will be minimal because the beta-carotene-rich leaves are usually not juiced. The flavonoids apigenin and luteolin end up partially in the juice and partially left behind in the pulp. No peer-reviewed clinical trial has demonstrated that celery juice cures specific diseases. Its vitamin profile is decent for what it is, a concentrated vegetable liquid, but it does not contain anything you cannot get from eating the whole vegetable, and eating it whole gives you the fiber and the leaves besides.

If you genuinely enjoy celery juice, adding the leaves to your juicer and consuming the pulp in cooking (soups, stews, veggie patties) would capture the nutrients you are otherwise throwing away. The stalks-only juice that social media favors is, nutritionally speaking, the least efficient way to consume the plant.

1
International Journal of Food Science and Technology. Effect of heat treatment and refrigerated storage on antioxidant properties of pre-cut celery (Apium graveolens L.)
2
Food Chemistry. Antioxidant responses in minimally processed celery during refrigerated storage
3
Acta Biochimica et Biophysica Sinica. Transcriptome profiling of β-carotene biosynthesis genes and β-carotene accumulation in leaf blades and petioles of celery cv. Jinnanshiqin
4
PubMed. The gene encoding lycopene epsilon cyclase of celery enhanced lutein and β-carotene contents and confers increased salt tolerance in Arabidopsis
5
International Journal of Food Science and Technology. Effects of light exposure on chlorophyll, sugars and vitamin C content of fresh-cut celery (Apium graveolens var. dulce) petioles
6
PubMed Central. Effects of organic and chemical nitrogen fertilization and postharvest treatments on the visual and nutritional quality of fresh-cut celery (Apium graveolens L.) during storage
7
PubMed. Citric acid and enzyme-assisted modification of flavonoids from celery (Apium graveolens) extract and their anti-inflammatory activity in HMC-1.2 cells
8
PubMed. Dietary intake and risk assessment of phototoxic furocoumarins in humans