The point I was trying to make with hot water runs closer to your second observation, and closer to the coffee issue above. Unfortunately, I didn’t make that clear. The weight of cooked oatmeal is mostly water, and unless a magnesium rich water is used to cook with, you will be getting considerably less of it.

Your first point about magnesium being a metal is inarguable, isn’t it? Of course, as long as the water used to cook something is consumed and not thrown away or drained off, hardly any magnesium would be lost. The magnesium may be leeched off into the water, but it’s still there. This made me wonder about the cooking prohibition (raw foodies are everywhere). My own diet is heavy in raw foods, but I don’t see any reason to go 100% raw. Cooking clearly makes some foods more digestible. So, even if a raw food has twice the nutrients, it doesn’t do much good if they are not absorbed, or bioavailable. This made me wonder what else could be at work.
I did find something called “starch gelatinization,” which is created through cooking and improves digestibility. The flip side is that some indigestible starch is created at the same time. However, in the case of oats, this would seem to reduce digestibility by about 6%. However, this has to be balanced against the great increase in digestibility gained by cooking, which would far outweigh it. I could go way down the rabbit hole reading about this, but for now I’ll delete the part about cooking above. Thanks again for the heads up.

I have noticed what appears to be one logical error in your article regarding the boiling of oatmeal.

First – oatmeal does not evaporate and will not be drained off with the boiling water making oatmeal. Magnesium is a metal and cannot \\"disappear\\" with hot water.

Second – I believe you have interpreted the FDA charts incorrectly. It would appear you base your magnesium content on the volume of the oatmeal item instead of the actual oatmeal weight involved in the chart. Refering to the weights on the chart it can be seen that 1 cup of prepared oatmeal contains about 60% water and not the full 1 cup as used in the raw measurement quantities. Thus the 60% reduction in magnesium content.

I would hope this may help to a more accurate text. Your article was well done and appreciated by me as a way to get research clues and an entrance to more technical studies.

Thanx!