What is in it
Celery is listed among the vegetables with very high nitrate content, above 2,500 mg per kg of fresh weight, in the same group as rocket, spinach and beetroot (Olas, 2024). The review that reports this did not find any trials of celery itself on nitrate or blood pressure (Olas, 2024).
Celery’s best-known polyphenol is apigenin, a flavone. Most of the apigenin in food is attached to sugars, and gut bacteria help release it. People typically eat about 0.45 to 1.17 mg of apigenin a day (DeRango-Adem & Blay, 2021).
Celery stalks also contain small amounts of furanocoumarins (see the table below). We have not yet read a study on what these amounts mean for health.
Polyphenols at a glance
These figures come from the Phenol-Explorer database and are given in mg per 100 g of the fresh food (Neveu et al., 2010; Phenol-Explorer, n.d.). The database records how each value was measured, and the methods are not interchangeable: chromatography identifies and measures individual compounds, some values are measured after the compounds have been broken down chemically (hydrolysis), and the Folin assay gives a single figure for total phenolic content.
Reading these figures. Apigenin averages about 5.2 mg per 100 g, but it ranges from 0 to 19.1 mg across 7 samples from 2 studies, so the amount in any one stalk is hard to predict. It is measured after hydrolysis, which removes the sugars it is attached to in the plant. The furanocoumarin values come from a single study of 7 samples. The Folin assay gives about 13.6 mg (3 samples from 2 studies). The methods measure different things, so the totals should not be compared directly.
What the evidence tells us
Well supported
None of the celery findings we have read so far reaches this label.
Promising
Blood pressure. A 2025 meta-analysis of nine randomised trials found that celery lowered systolic blood pressure by about 1 mmHg. But every trial used celery seed or leaf extract in capsules, or a decoction, rather than the vegetable, all were in Asian populations, only one was at low risk of bias, and the results varied a great deal. After correcting for possible missing studies, the effect on systolic pressure shrank to about 0.4 mmHg (Liu et al., 2025). The analysis was funded by Chinese state laboratory grants, and the authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Plausible pathway
Nitrate. Celery is very high in nitrate (Olas, 2024), so it could add to the nitrate from leafy greens in the same way that spinach and rocket do. No trial we have read has tested this with celery.
What we do not know
The apigenin figures vary a great deal between samples, from none detected to about 19 mg per 100 g in Phenol-Explorer. The only human study of how apigenin is absorbed used parsley rather than celery (DeRango-Adem & Blay, 2021). At supplement doses, apigenin can interfere with enzymes that break down some medicines, including warfarin, but this has been described for supplements, not for celery as a food (DeRango-Adem & Blay, 2021).
References
DeRango-Adem, E. F., & Blay, J. (2021). Does oral apigenin have real potential for a therapeutic effect in the context of human gastrointestinal and other cancers? Frontiers in Pharmacology, 12, Article 681477. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2021.681477
Liu, D., Zhao, H., Xu, H., & Hu, J. (2025). Effects of celery (Apium graveolens) on blood pressure, glycemic and lipid profile in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Frontiers in Nutrition, 12, Article 1597680. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2025.1597680
Neveu, V., Perez-Jiménez, J., Vos, F., Crespy, V., du Chaffaut, L., Mennen, L., Knox, C., Eisner, R., Cruz, J., Wishart, D., & Scalbert, A. (2010). Phenol-Explorer: An online comprehensive database on polyphenol contents in foods. Database, 2010, Article bap024. https://doi.org/10.1093/database/bap024
Olas, B. (2024). The cardioprotective role of nitrate-rich vegetables. Foods, 13(5), Article 691. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods13050691
Phenol-Explorer. (n.d.). Showing all polyphenols found in celery stalks, raw (Version 3.6) [Data set]. Retrieved October 18, 2026, from http://phenol-explorer.eu/contents/food/407
Wang, M., Firrman, J., Zhang, L., Arango-Argoty, G., Tomasula, P., Liu, L., Xiao, W., & Yam, K. (2017). Apigenin impacts the growth of the gut microbiota and alters the gene expression of Enterococcus. Molecules, 22(8), Article 1292. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules22081292
