one big potential problem with simply adding magnesium to fertilizers is that its is extremely hydrophilic and will lock to water and become impenetrable. My suspicion is that one of the larger issues that aren't even discussed is the role of fungi in the soil. Usually there is a symbiotic relationship between plants and fungi whereby the fungi breaks down minerals in the soil and hands off these precious ions to the plant in exchange for sugars. By giving readily digestible nutrients to the plants via artificial fertilizers, we rob the fungi of its role. The plants stop working with the fungi and they soon die off. This in turn robs us of nutrients the plant would have attained as a result of the symbiotic relationship. Magnesium being among them.
Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status
51–60 of 412 posts
Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. I recently started using Magnesium Glycinate as a supplement and I feel it truly changed my life, not exaggerating. I’ve suffered from chronic general anxiety for most of my teens and adult life. Magnesium has completely cleared this up, things I thought were just part of my personality (being anxious and other associated things) were actually due to a chronic magnesium deficiency. I just have to make su…
How much and which brand do you take?
Not sure what he’s doing but this should help:
Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status
#53I know geeks love Norman Borlaug, but there was a catch: the new high-yield varieties are dependent on fertilizers made from fossil fuels. These plants grow fast and have more carbs and less of everything else. There needs to be a second Green Revolution, this time sustainable.
There is a reason nerds love Normal Borlaug, and that is he probably saved tons of people. Sure, maybe the food is less nutritious (a nebulous term, anyway) but we do have food.
Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status
#54I understand this seems mostly to be about soil depletion. I'm curious more generally if vegetables are also less nutritious because they are selectively bread for high water content and size. For example, its appeared to me for years that you vegetables you get on a Subway sandwich must have almost no nutritional content. They are all way paler than you'd normally see, and super watery. Thinking about it, I suppose…
Home grown tomatoes are typically much better tasting/more flavorful than the store bought ones, so I think there is probably something to this.
Although this can mostly be attributed to ripeness. Ripe tomatoes degrade extremely quickly so store bought ones are almost exclusive picked unripe and then artificially ripened at locations closer to where they are intended to be sold.
This is also why canned tomatoes are generally considered superior for making tomato soups and sauces. Tomatoes harvested with the intention to be conserved are picked much riper since they can be processed and packaged almost immediately after.
Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status
#55If you put a whole cow into a meat grinder, the resulting paste contains every single micro and macro nutrient required by the human body, in their most bioavailable forms, many of which are completely absent in vegetarian and vegan diets. For millions of years, humans ate ruminant animals who’s herds they followed around, and almost nothing else. People who eat nothing but ruminant meat and organs become slim even i…
Definitely going to need to source some of those claims.
The sad truth is that I don’t have an interventional, randomized study to show you. I could tell you to do your own research but that’s not very convincing either. All I can say is that if you or someone you know has symptoms that could be improved by a carnivore diet, just try it for a month. That’s the best proof I can offer.
As soon as academia gets around to conducting a study, I will make sure it’s posted.
Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Frankly, it seems to me like it's rather relatively simple thing to regulate. We already mandate things like adding vitamins to milk or flour. Extending this to vegetables really doesn't seem like big problem: farmers would just have to buy magnesium-enriched fertilizer.
Why pour it in your diet when you can put it in a pill to eat directly along with 30 other vitamins?
Then the issue is to remember to take the pill. Much easier to forget than to forget to eat.
Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status
#57If you put a whole cow into a meat grinder, the resulting paste contains every single micro and macro nutrient required by the human body, in their most bioavailable forms, many of which are completely absent in vegetarian and vegan diets. For millions of years, humans ate ruminant animals who’s herds they followed around, and almost nothing else. People who eat nothing but ruminant meat and organs become slim even i…
Most of the B12 from cow flesh is from supplements given to the cows.
Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status
#58Matter cannot be created, just reformed. There were 100,000 humans at one point and now there are 7 billion. All that matter came from somewhere. To be fair, we have killed a lot of animals but also created a lot more in the form of farm animals.
It seems reasonable to me that this is unlikely to be sustainable even if we found a way to send humans off planet. Maybe that missing magnesium gets pulled out of the soil into crops, then into our bellies, and then into a wooden box that sits as far away from our arable land as we can get it.
I of course have no scientific background or idea what I’m taking about, just a fun pop science theory that came to mind when reading this.
Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Home grown tomatoes are typically much better tasting/more flavorful than the store bought ones, so I think there is probably something to this.
Although this can mostly be attributed to ripeness. Ripe tomatoes degrade extremely quickly so store bought ones are almost exclusive picked unripe and then artificially ripened at locations closer to where they are intended to be sold. This is also why canned tomatoes are generally considered superior for making tomato soups and sauces. Tomatoes harvested with the intention to be conserved are picked much riper sinc…
That's a good point. I was thinking about similarity between tomatoes and eggs, where a free range egg, especially where the farmer let's the chickens have the run of the farm, have much brighter and deeper colored yolks. I had understood this to relate to the chickens diet and the nutrition of the egg. So I imagined deeper brighter red tomatoes to be similarly more nutritious. It could be different mechanisms though, or maybe neither is more nutritious, they just look nicer.
Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Frankly, it seems to me like it's rather relatively simple thing to regulate. We already mandate things like adding vitamins to milk or flour. Extending this to vegetables really doesn't seem like big problem: farmers would just have to buy magnesium-enriched fertilizer.
Why pour it in your diet when you can put it in a pill to eat directly along with 30 other vitamins?
Because anybody with sense prefers eating food to popping pills.