Chives
Food · Vegetable · Food, Typed Supps
Chives pack a vitamin K punch pound-for-pound, but since you only ever use a small sprinkle, don't expect much from a garnish-sized serving.
Stage by stage
- Chopped & Released (Mouth): Cutting or chopping chive leaves ruptures their cells, triggering an enzyme reaction that converts odorless compounds into pungent allyl sulfides similar to those in onions and garlic.
- Broken Down (Stomach): In the stomach, chives' fiber, vitamin C, and fat-soluble vitamin K are released from the plant's cell walls alongside folate and iron.
- Absorbed With Fat (Small Intestine): Because vitamin K is fat-soluble, the small intestine packages it with dietary fats into micelles for absorption — eating chives with even a little oil or fat improves uptake.
- Built Into Bone (Bone & Blood): Absorbed vitamin K travels to the liver to activate clotting proteins and to bone tissue, where it helps carboxylate osteocalcin, a protein involved in binding calcium into bone matrix.
Timing
Vitamin K is fat-soluble, so absorption improves when chives are eaten as part of a meal containing some fat rather than alone.
Time to effect
- Weeks: Because a normal serving of chives is only a few grams, any measurable effect on vitamin K status or other nutrient levels depends on eating them regularly as part of a varied diet over weeks, not from a single dish.
Allergens
None of the fourteen major allergens. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.
Eating patterns
Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Keto, Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Low-FODMAP.
Satiety
The satiety index is measured on 240 kcal servings. At 29 kcal per 100 g that is 836 g of this, which is not a serving anyone eats — so the index has nothing to say about it.
Environmental footprint
0.5 kg CO2e and 108 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Other vegetables" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.
Cost band
Cheap — roughly £2.5 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.
Key nutrients
Nutrition per 100g
- Calories: 28.7
- Protein: 1.5g
- Carbohydrate: 2.6g
- of which sugars: 2.6g
- Fat: 0.3g
- of which saturated: 0g
- Fibre: 4.7g
- Sodium: 7mg
Food vs. supplement
Fresh chives deliver vitamin K, vitamin C, and folate alongside fiber and organosulfur antioxidants for negligible calories, but because typical servings are so small, they're best viewed as a flavorful nutritional accent rather than a primary source of any single nutrient.
Kitchen tip
Snip fresh chives with scissors and add them at the very end of cooking or as a raw garnish — their delicate flavor compounds and some of their vitamin C degrade quickly with heat.
Common myth
"Chives are just a garnish with no meaningful nutrition." In reality: Gram for gram, chives are among the more vitamin K- and vitamin C-dense vegetables (about 213 µg vitamin K and 58 mg vitamin C per 100 g), but a typical sprinkle-sized serving of a few grams delivers only a small fraction of those per-100g figures often cited online.
Recipes that use it
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