What it is
Magnesium is a cofactor in over three hundred enzyme systems — energy production, muscle and nerve function, blood-sugar regulation, sleep quality. It's unglamorous infrastructure: nothing works better with extra magnesium, but plenty works worse without enough.
How much
References run around 310–420 mg a day (higher end for men). Refined diets miss it structurally: milling grains strips most of their magnesium, so the more processed the diet, the shorter it falls — suboptimal intake is common even where outright deficiency is not.
How well it's tracked
Here's the honest part: poorly. Magnesium rarely appears on nutrition labels, so most logged foods contribute nothing to your total even when the food itself did. Your magnesium line is a lower bound, most informative on whole-food days — read the trend, not the absolute.
Food sources
Pumpkin seeds and almonds lead; then cashews, peanuts, whole grains, legumes, dark leafy greens, and — pleasingly — dark chocolate. The pattern is the familiar one: unrefined plants.
In the app
Magnesium has its Insights card with contributors. If a clinician has you targeting it, remember the undercount when reading your chart — and that supplement forms carry no macros to log.