What Is Free Choline & What Foods Can I Find It In?

Free choline is a member of the Choline family, it belongs to the choline phospholipids.

Choline is a complex essential nutrient involved in several diverse body functions.

Choline is not classified as a vitamin or a mineral. It's a water-soluble nutrient with an amino acid-like metabolism.

Free Choline Is Essential

Free choline is a water-soluble nutrient. It’s an essential dietary nutrient for us. (source ◳)

Free choline is the major metabolite of choline, and the concentration of free choline in the blood is used as a biomarker of choline status.

Different Cholines

There are several different cholines. But the most common sources of choline in foods are free choline, phosphatidylcholine, sphingomyelin, phosphocholine, and glycerophosphocholine. (source ◳)

Choline In Our Body

Choline is involved in many critical physiological functions throughout our lives. (source ◳)

You can find benefits of consuming free choline in Free Choline: 6 Research-Backed Benefits .

Free choline is absorbed in the small intestine and stores in the liver.

Our body is also able to produce choline in the liver. But the amount that it synthesizes is not sufficient to meet our needs.

It means that we need to obtain some choline from our diet. (source ◳)

Foods You Can Find Free Choline In

You find free choline mostly in sausage and luncheon meat, legumes, baked goods, and vegetable products.

Examples of food sources include

• Pan-Fried Chorizo
• Hummus
• Whole-Wheat Bread
• Grape Tomatoes
• Sunflower Seed Kernels
• Pan-Fried Italian Pork Sausage
• Onion Rings

Foods in our nutrition tool

You can find regularly updated, top ranked lists of foods for over 200+ nutrients in our nutrition tool.

If you are interested in what foods contain the most free choline, we recommend you visit our tool.

Here's our top ranked list of foods that contain Free Choline.