Best Sources of Magnesium

Oat Bran or Wheat Bran for Breakfast

Bran and FruitNow this is how we start the day, especially if you already eat cereal. While raw oat bran offers about 225 mg of magnesium per 100 grams (and 256 calories), raw wheat bran offers near 350 mg of magnesium at half the calories. You are well on your way here, but there are a couple things to remember. These brans must be raw. Cook them, make oatmeal with hot water, or make cookies, and the bulk of that magnesium will be gone. They’ll still be fairly high in magnesium, but no magnesium super food.
The other thing to remember is not to overdo it. Too much bran can cause bloating, gas and diarrhea. Take it slowly, and drink lots of water. The more bran you eat, the more water you need. If you stop yourself up with too much raw bran, it can inhibit your body’s absorption of other minerals. If you are wondering how to eat raw bran without feeling like a horse, try mixing with milk or even soymilk. A dd some sweetening in the form of honey or raisins, or others fruits. Add some cinnamon for a little tang.
The nice thing about raw bran for breakfast is that you are almost certain to cover your magnesium needs for the rest of the day by just eating normally.

Pumpkin Seeds

One Pumkin Seed - One Mg MagnesiumPumpkin seeds are in a category of their own so far as magnesium rich foods go. At 535 mg per 100 gram serving, you are covered for the whole day. The advantage of pumpkin seeds is that they are very suitable to snacking. Wherever you are, at any time of day, you can pop a few pumpkin seeds in your mouth and get roughly a milligram of magnesium per seed. Can’t go too wrong here, except watch the calories (over 500 per 100 grams).

Chocolate

Chocolate for delicious magnesiumThe estimates of magnesium in chocolate range 100 mg to over 500 mg per 100 grams of chocolate servings. Milk chocolate or other highly diluted chocolates are well below even the 100 mg figure, and not worth considering for their magnesium value. Yet, it’s all here at the top of the list because most of us love to eat chocolate – so here’s an excuse, sort of. The thing to remember is that raw cocoa beans would be your absolute best source for magnesium, though they are certainly not to everyone’s taste, and not all that easy to find. To make them easier to eat, even enjoyable, try grinding the whole beans in a food processor, and sprinkling them on yogurt or ice cream. Or mix them with a drink in a juicer. Or add them to tea. If even this is more than you want to deal with, just take some cocoa powder and make an extra strong hot chocolate, or eat sweetened dark chocolate (at least 89% cocoa content). For more information about chocolate check out our posts about the benefits of chocolate and health chocolate scams.

Almonds and Other Nuts or Seeds

Almonds each have 3 mg of magnesium Almonds, with cashews running a close second, are excellent sources of magnesium. 100 grams of almonds pack in roughly 180 mg of magnesium, while 100 grams of cashews have almost 170 mg. Broken down, this means one almond is equivalent to 3 mg of magnesium. In fact, if we look at it that way, brazil nuts are super sources, with about 7 mg of magnesium in each nut (about 145 mg per 100 grams of brazil nuts). Pine nuts and just about all other nuts are also good sources of magnesium. Raw nuts, of course, are best (when they can be eaten).

Spinach

Spinach is rich in magnesiumSpinach. No surprise here- we’ve always known it was healthy. A mere 100 grams of spinach is very easy to eat, very low in calories, and very high in magnesium as well as other great nutrients. Before turning up your nose at this food, try some treats such as spinach salad with bacon dressing, or creamy spinach soup. See our spinach recipes page for more. And read one to see a great partner for spinach.

Halibut

While many fish are good sources of magnesium, halibut is the king of magnesium rich foods…er, seafoods. Halinut, spinach and garlic cream sauce magnesium super mealA mere 3.5 oz. (100 gram) serving delivers a solid 107 mg of magnesium. Now halibut doesn’t have much taste, which is either a good or bad thing, depending on how much you like fish. Which is why it needs to be cooked with flourish. And there’s no better partner that our friend above – spinach. If you have doubts about the deliciousness that this powerhouse high magnesium meal can bring you, just look at this picture of halibut with spinach and garlic cream sauce. What a wonderful way to cure a magnesium deficiency!

Beans – Black or White

Beans with spinach provide a very high magnesium mealBeans, glorious beans…

Both white beans and black beans pack anywhere between 110-135 mg of magnesium rich goodness to each cup of boiled beans. That means bean soup!

White beans are high in potassium (but low in sodium), iron, manganese and soluble fiber as well. Soluble fiber is what helps your body rid itself of cholesterol. White beans also contain protease inhibitors, which are know to inhibit the growth of cancer cells.

Black beans are rich in protein, iron and vitamin B. Black beans also help reduce cholesterol, help maintain balanced blood sugar levels and (of course) prevent constipation. All of these factors help to lessen to incidence of heart disease, diabetes and many gastrointestinal disorders. Black beans are also rich in phytochemicals, which are substances found only in plant foods that are know to help fight cancer.

They also couldn’t be easier to eat, as there are a myriad of black bean recipes and white bean recipes. These are among the easiest ways to take in magnesium rich foods and to keep your body fit.

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/238506-black-bean-nutritional-facts/#ixzz1YxPXvAqK

(Click Here for a Full List of Magnesium Rich Foods)

The full FDA list of magnesium content in foods is available from the FDA website.
Otherwise, go to our own list of magnesium rich foods and see a video there showing you some of the best.

A Note on Magnesium Rich Foods Lists

Kombu is magnesium rich, but dangerous in quantity (if you can eat that much)

Toxic amounts of this health food are needed to impact magnesium levels.

Magnesium rich foods lists often include things like herbs, cocoa powder and kombu kelp (a tough and chewy seaweed). Great, except they are measuring magnesium per 100 gram (about 3.5 ounces) serving. Now go and try to down 100 grams of coriander. That would be more than a cup, if dry, and a heck of a lot even fresh. Or how about a cup of cocoa powder (not hot cocoa with milk, just the powder)? Don’t even think about the kombu. You’ll be chewing all day, and get an overdose of iodine long before you replenish your magnesium levels. So go ahead to the other lists, and view their advice – usually written by some overworked woman at a content sweatshop in Mumbai.

(Full List and Video of Magnesium Rich Foods)

You see how useless these unedited lists can be? I assume you are here to learn about which foods high in magnesium can help you avoid magnesium deficiency. And by that, I mean foods that you can enough of as a normal person to get the benefits of their magnesium content. Well, here’s a list of magnesium rich foods that you can actually use, and actually consume without some sort of superhuman and dangerous effort. Let’s get started….

Magnesium Threonate

Magnesium threonate for brain enhancementMagnesium threonate is the brain vitamin of the day, it seems. Brain supplement forums and blogs are suddenly all talking about how this entirely new compound of magnesium may be able to boost your cognitive ability. Well, that sounds good, but let’s see what we know so far…

What exactly is magnesium threonate?

Threonate is a metabolite, one that has been so far useful in assisting the body’s absorption of vitamin C. A metabolite is something that is produce by your metabolism. In other words, your body produces threonate, and that threonate helps you to absorb vitamin C.

Not just that, though. Researchers have also found that threonate can assist magnesium in crossing the blood-brain barrier. This new supplement called magnesium threonate (Magnesium L-threonate) is a magnesium salt of L-threonic acid that has the formula Mg(C4H7O5)2. The supplement was made by the following process at a university in Xian, China, if you need more details of the manufacturing method.

A study at Tsing Hua University in Beijing fed magnesium threonate to rats to observe the effects of their cognitive abilities. The results showed that the rats were in fact able to think better after taking these supplements. It should be noted that the rats were not in any way magnesium deficient before the tests.

What can magnesium threonate do for you?

It has long been understood that magnesium is essential to the function of many organs, and that people in developed nations tend to suffer from magnesium deficiencies. The problem, though, was that oral magnesium supplements had little access to the brain, and so little effect on cognition could be expected. By creating magnesium threonate, the researchers hoped to deliver magnesium more directly to the brain. The results (published in a January 2010 issue of Neuron) were impressive, at least for rats:

“We found that increased brain magnesium enhanced many different forms of learning and memory in both young and aged rats,” says Dr. Liu. A close examination of cellular changes associated with memory revealed an increase in the number of functional synapses, activation of key signaling molecules and an enhancement of short- and long-term synaptic processes that are crucial for learning and memory.

According to the research, magnesium threonate “leads to the enhancement of learning abilities, working memory, and short- and long-term memory in rats.”

This is significant. In addition to the increase in number of synapses, short-term memory improved by 18% and long-term memory improved by 100%.

The bad news is, you are not a rat. So we can’t say with any certainty what effect it will have on your brain, and we are blissfully unaware of any possible side-effects.

Should I start taking magnesium threonate?

That’s the million dollar question. It looks very promising, but nothing is guaranteed. The possible risks and rewards are all yours. It seems likely that the risk is small, so if you are willing to try the stuff out and see if you fire up your brain power, give it a whirl. In my case, I need all the help I can get! If magnesium threonate has anywhere near the effect on humans that it showed on rats (in just one test, remember), than I could be a whole different person. What do you think?