The Contribution of Dietary Magnesium in Farm Animals and Human Nutrition.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Narrative review synthesizing literature on animal and human nutrition without systematic methodology.
PubMed 33557151 · doi:10.3390/nu13020509
What was done
This narrative review summarized the existing literature on dietary magnesium requirements and supplementation strategies in farm animals (pigs, poultry, and dairy cows) and examined the role of animal-source foods in human magnesium nutrition.
What was found
The abstract reports no numerical data, effect sizes, or statistical findings. It qualitatively notes that magnesium supplementation above baseline requirements improves meat quality and sow fertility in pigs, supports egg production and deficiency prevention in poultry, and prevents hypomagnesemia-related conditions (grass tetany and milk fever) in dairy cows, which in turn provides dietary magnesium to support human bone and muscle health.
Why it matters
It highlights how agricultural magnesium supplementation directly impacts the nutritional composition of animal-derived foods available in the human food supply.
Limits
The review relies on narrative synthesis rather than systematic review methodology, provides no quantitative metrics or dosing parameters in the abstract, and does not evaluate study quality or risk of bias across the summarized literature.
Cited by
- supports Magnesium is an essential cofactor for more than 300 enzymes, including DNA repair enzymes and DNA polymerases involved in DNA replication.