Aidan:
Hello and welcome to the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. My name is Aidan Muir and I’m here with my co-host, Leah Higl and this is episode 212, where we’re going to be talking about eight nutrients you might not be getting enough of. And we’re doing this based on statistics, looking at countries like Australia, America and the UK. And based on those stats, these eight nutrients are commonly under consumed.
Technically, if you want to nitpick, only seven of these are nutrients but we’re going to get to that and we’ll talk about that when the time comes. It’s funny that I always make comments about like nitpicking or haters and stuff like that. Ever since I started talking about this, no one’s given any hate comments. Even before that, no real hate comments. Just in case.
Leah:
The first nutrient we’re going to talk about is magnesium. So, low grade insufficiency of magnesium is pretty common population wide. It’s unfortunately not one that we can test super easily just via a standard blood test, particularly in Australia. Technically there is a red blood cell specific test that can pick up deficiency at much greater prevalence than standard blood tests that we have access to.
But it’s not, again, very accessible, at least in Australia. It’s not really something that you can kind of just walk in and just get. And our brief stance is that most people could probably get more magnesium through food because it’s so abundant in the food supply. And the simplest option is to just eat more nutrient rich food in general. But specifically focusing on things like leafy greens, legumes, whole grains, and even like nuts and seeds, they can all be really great sources of magnesium.
So, we’re really just looking for a big variety of a lot of your plant based options. It’s a cliche, but magnesium is involved in over 300 different functions within the body. I feel like we say that about like every nutrient as like our first part of the spiel usually, but it is involved in so many functions in the body. And by addressing deficiency or suboptimal intake, there is links to improving things like muscle function, sleep, and even insulin sensitivity.
And then if you’re not getting it through food, supplementation is also an option. And our main recommendation, if not using it for gut specific purposes, like using it as a stool softener, like an osmotic laxative, would be to go for magnesium glycanate or threonate if you’re going to be supplementing.
Aidan:
Iron is the second one we’re going to be talking about. I’m going to start by simplifying down to the recommended daily intake. So, men are aiming for around eight milligrams per day. Women with a regular menstrual cycle are aiming for 18 milligrams. So, you can see that it’s obviously so much higher and harder to achieve there as well. And during pregnancy, it rises even further to 27 milligrams.
Since it’s also better absorbed from animal sources, plant-based needs are even higher than that as well. So like, that’s the first piece of context in terms of like how much we need, and you can see huge differences there. The second piece of context is like how much is in food. So, I’m going to start with the simplest one that I can wrap my head around and that is 200 grams of red meat is around five milligrams of iron.
So for somebody aiming for eight milligrams, that’s a pretty massive percentage of it. Aiming for 18, that’s not huge. Obviously animal based iron is better absorbed, but still it’s five out of 18. It’s not a huge, huge amount. Podcasting isn’t the most visually friendly medium. Usually when I’m talking about this on Instagram, I’ll show a bunch of different examples of different foods and stuff like that.
But a few things I do want to kind of talk about is that other meat options still have iron, even if they’re not red meat, they just have less. I kind of make this point because sometimes people will add red meat twice a week as an example, and say it’s in that amount and it comes as five milligrams, it’s still not even necessarily adding five milligrams. Because maybe you’re taking away like two milligrams from another form of meat. So, it’s a net positive of like three milligrams, for example.
There are obviously a bunch of plant-based options as well, such as dark leafy greens, pumpkin seeds, red kidney beans, oats, and much more. Fortified foods can help as well. I might even get you to cut in and list some like plant-based fortified foods if you want.
Leah:
Yeah, I’m really big on the fortified cereals. So, I think like weetbix and nutrigrain being kind of the big ones there. Wonder white has some good bread and wrap options that are fortified. And then if you are vegetarian or vegan and you eat mock meats, there are things like Veggie Delights and other brands that also have iron fortification.
Aidan:
Yeah, so that very much helps, particularly if plant-based and even if not plant-based, like even some of the like fortified cereals and stuff like that can help. And I’m also surprisingly pro encouraging supplementation or iron infusions if somebody was consistently deficient otherwise.
Obviously, in my job as a dietitian, if somebody’s sees me and this is the thing we’re looking at, I will almost always go for food first. I’ll go deep down that rabbit hole, see what we can do. If it seems like it’s not feasible, then I’ll look at supplements. If I’m just out with like a friend and they’re like asking me about this, it’s almost like I’m pushing something.
Cause I’m like, I don’t want to go deep down this road. Particularly because I don’t want to go down the route of what do you like? What do you not like? I don’t want to have to spend ages on it, but I’m a bit more pro-supplementation or iron infusions than you would expect.
Just because I also personally just want people to feel better. I just don’t like the idea of people being iron-deficient consistently when they could solve it through other ways. Which, on that topic, because this could be the first response that there can be some side effects of iron supplementation. In my own two senses, I would also just try to address those. Like for example, constipation is a side effect. I’d look at addressing the constipation rather than necessarily dropping the supplement.
There’s a bunch of reasons for this, but it’s even just the improved energy levels. And if somebody’s like an athlete, the sporting kind of benefits can help there as well. But, fortunately, this is also a good one that we can test for with a blood test as well. The magnesium one, you kind of have to be looking a little bit more just from a dietary approach unless you get that specific red blood cell test. But, with iron, we can just get a simple blood test.
Leah:
The next nutrient is going to be calcium. So, the recommended daily intake for calcium is surprisingly higher than what most people would probably expect. So for adults broadly, we’re looking at a thousand milligrams a day being the RDI. And then this actually rises to 1300 milligrams for older adults.
So we’re thinking postmenopausal and men over 70, the requirements do increase. And for context, one cup of dairy milk or a fortified alternative often has around 300 milligrams of calcium. So we’re thinking three and a bit. glasses of milk if that was the only thing way we were getting calcium.
Three plus glasses of milk a day is what we would be aiming for to meet that recommended daily intake. Which does sound like a lot of milk. Obviously we can get calcium from other sources and often diversifying where we’re getting our calcium from can help round out our intake. But, many people are consuming a lower amount than what would be recommended.
Aidan:
Yeah. I feel like I’ve alluded to it too often on this podcast recently. But, in my old job, my boss was kind of a savage and he had this whole vibe that you can’t let clients go, ever. And I remember I saw one person, and they didn’t really have that much need to see me. It was just like a one-off consult. And he’s like, you have to get it back. You have to get it back.
What can you do to get it back? And we did diet free analysis for people. That’s it, like, do a diet analysis of a diet, see if there are any gaps in there, and then try and address the gaps. And this person was on a ketogenic diet for personal reasons, and they just wanted to do that. And they also didn’t want to be having dairy. And when we did the diet analysis, even on that ketogenic diet, they were ticking every box from a micronutrient perspective.
They were pretty health-focused and into this. The one thing they weren’t ticking was calcium. And I remember doing a meal plan for that. And it was a lot harder than I thought to get calcium with non-dairy sources, with much variety. There were a lot of things I was including. Like, certain dark leafy green vegetables, almonds, and a few other things in large-ish amounts. And I think I might’ve put in fortified almond milk or something like that.
Like, there would have been like something like that in there too. It was harder than I would have expected. Because it’s hard to hit that high of a target without using a lot of fortified products as well. There are a few other things that we could add now. Like, for example, I don’t know if it still exists, that John West calcium. You know? It has like 800 milligrams. There’s some stuff like that that exists, but yeah, it can be hard to get to these high targets.
Leah:
Unfortunately, like the magnesium situation, there isn’t a super solid blood test that we can look at and go, oh, this is reflective of your dietary intake. Even more so than magnesium because there really is no way to look at this through your bloods. And this is because the calcium in your blood is very tightly regulated and controlled. So if you don’t have enough of a dietary intake to meet your needs, your body’s just going to take the calcium from your bones to put it into your blood to maintain homeostasis.
So, realistically, the one way for us to evaluate this is to look at someone’s diet and pop it into something like chronometer. Here, we can break down how much calcium they are getting in a typical day of their intake. And then, address any deficiencies from there. We largely care about these higher intakes of calcium for bone health reasons based on the mechanism that I just discussed. With the body pulling from the bones when your intake is not adequate.
But there still is only one variable. We are usually fine if someone is slightly below this target intake and they’re doing all the other things required for bone health. Like, strength training, adequate vitamin D. I mean, we’ve got episodes on nutrition for bone health. But if they’re doing all that stuff and the intake of calcium is slightly lower than the RDI, I’m not going to be too concerned. As long as it’s not like significantly below.
And then if it is significantly below, it’s something we would look to address. In a perfect world, we would address this through a food first approach. Like we’ve mentioned, there are plenty of foods that are calcium-rich, dairy being a big one. But, working with more plant-based people who don’t consume dairy, there are a whole host of plant-based options. But swinging back around to what you were saying, Aiden, is that I usually use tons of fortified foods in these circumstances.
So it’s not usually gonna be a super whole food focus. It is going to be fortified milks and calcium set tofu and things like that. And then the top roppers are like your nuts, seeds, dark leafy greens and that kind of thing just to round out the last little bit. But supplementation is an option. So it is something that you can do if you are struggling to consistently get it through diet alone.
Aidan:
That also just reminded me of a slight variation of that story that I forgot to include was that she didn’t want fortified foods. So, I didn’t do calcium fortified foods.
Leah:
Oh, that’s so hard.
Aidan:
I’m like, no wonder it was so hard. As I was telling the story, I was like, why was this so hard for me if I could use fortified? And I was like, no, that was a limitation. That was a constraint. She had a personal preference not to have fortified foods.
Leah:
Yeah, if you’re not consuming dairy and you’re not consuming fortified foods, it becomes, I wouldn’t say impossible. But very, very difficult to get anywhere close to that number consistently.
Aidan:
Yeah. Can confirm it was possible. We found it, but I was like, there’s no variation. Like this is just the same thing.
Leah:
I you’d have to be so specific about the foods you were choosing each and every day. And it would always have to be like fish with bones and things like that.
Aidan:
Now, potassium is another one that a lot of people under consume even more so than magnesium in this case. I would also say that the key message is eat more nutrient rich food. Cause with magnesium, we both have a sense that eating more nutrient-rich food is probably the move there. I think that potassium takes that to another extent. Because, with magnesium, you can be like, these are the kind of food groups to focus on.
With potassium, I think it’s even more varied. A lot of people talk about this concept of bananas being super rich in potassium. But a medium banana has around 450 milligrams of potassium. Men should be aiming for around 3,800 milligrams on average. And I believe the RDI for women is around 2,800. It is lower than it is for men. Like, 450 is not a huge chunk of that. You just need to consume a lot of potassium-rich foods.
And why I say it’s even more broad than magnesium is you will find potassium usually in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy, meat, and alternatives. That’s literally the five core food groups. Uou just need to be eating more of the core food groups to a degree. And, in the absolute least fear-mongering way possible, the way I view it is to consume adequate calories while limiting intake of added sugar or added oils. Every extreme. But, every calorie that is spent on those is taken away from the opportunity to get in more potassium in a way.
I say that in the least fear-mongering way, where it’s like, I’m pretty big on food flexibility. Like, I think both of these things matter. But, this is how to increase potassium intake through food if we were to just focus on this one nutrient. Now, if we’re talking about why we’d be focusing on this, like why does this matter? So the main one that’s most beneficial for is fluid balance and also blood pressure regulation. It has a bunch of other potential relevant benefits like muscle and nerve function. Also, potentially bone health as well.
Like, the research links it pretty strongly with bone health, but there’s a lot of variables in that as well. Some people even report just feeling better on higher potassium intake. But, that’s also hard because it’s like the steps you take to achieve that, it’s more nutrient-rich food as well. It reduces blood pressure on average in people who otherwise have elevated blood pressure. So there is a bunch of things here. But, this is also another one that I would very much just assess intake versus needs rather than trying to measure in any other way.
Leah:
Now we’re going to touch on Omega-3. So, if we’re not actively trying to consume oily fish at least two to three times per week with an emphasis on things like salmon, sardines, that kind of thing. Or, actively trying to increase Omega-3s through plant-based options like your flax seeds, chia seeds, hemp, walnuts, all that jazz. It’s likely that your Omega-3 intake is lower than what would be ideal. And the way to address this is to either one, start doing those things, or supplement appropriately. So you can take a food-first approach to it.
You can supplement or you can maybe do a mix of both. If using fish oil from a supplementation point of view, we often recommend a triple strength one just to get a higher amount of EPA and DHA. Which are the beneficial active forms of omega-3. And if using a plant-based option, I’d be looking for a microalgae-based supplement as opposed to like a flax oil supplement that’s more like your alpha-linoleic acid.
So a bit of a really quick rundown is alpha-linoleic acid is the type of omega-3 that we’d find in plant-based foods that is naturally occurring, but our body needs to convert it into EPA and DHA, which is the more the the active forms we’re looking for that are connected to more of the health benefits associated with Omega-3. And this process of conversion is, it’s not great. And there’s a lot of things that can impact it. So we need like a ton of ALA to get even a small amount of EPA and DHA.
So if we’re thinking of a plant-based supplement, if we can go for microalgae, which is a direct form of EPA and DHA, that is going to be more beneficial. Although if we didn’t have much intake and the only thing you had access to was an ALA supplement. That’s better than nothing. The benefits of increasing your Omega-3 intake and meeting the recommended daily intake for it is super broad, but it’s largely scaled based on baseline level.
So, if you are not having much and then you increase it to what would be recommended, that’s obviously going to have a greater benefit than if you already have a decent intake and then you’re just kind of slightly elevating it from there. And the health benefits of having adequate Omega-3 also pretty broad, but we’re thinking things like joint health, heart health, cognitive function, eye health, and honestly a bunch of other things, including just generally reducing inflammation throughout the body.
Aidan:
Yeah, it’s easily one of the first things, not the first thing, but it’s one of the most common things that I would be looking for is seeing if somebody has a low dietary intake of that. And I’m even less pressed on the exact optimal way to solve it. It’s almost like if somebody is very little coming in, like getting something coming in is likely to help.
Leah:
Yes, absolutely.
Aidan:
Vitamin D is another one of the most common insufficiencies out there. And it’s kind of a little bit less of a nutrition topic because it’s actually relatively rare in foods. So, there are foods that contain it like higher fat fish contains it. Egg yolks sometimes have a bit. Liver has a fair amount and then mushrooms are exposed to sunlight do to, and then there are also a bunch of fortified foods. I think this is even more common in other countries.
Like I believe it’s more common in America than Australia for it. I suppose probably in the UK too, I don’t know, but I don’t say heaps in Australia for foods to be fortified with vitamin D. But, the reason why it’s less nutrition focused is because we obviously also get it from the sun. It’s another one that we fortunately can test for with a blood test, it is very simple. It’s another benefit of being in Australia that we can typically access it for free if it is done through a bulk billing clinic.
The downsides scale based on the severity. For example, if somebody is very deficient, it has very clear negatives, particularly from a bone health perspective. There is a spectrum here. I was listening to a podcast that I won’t name, but this guy’s a relatively well respected guy in the nutrition world, and he made a claim you’re not vitamin D deficient unless you’ve got rickets. And he was saying it seriously.
Leah:
Oh my gosh.
Aidan:
He was basically being like, no downside, no downside, no downside, rickets.
Leah:
That’s crazy. That’s a crazy take.
Aidan:
A very crazy take in my opinion. Whereas, I think a less crazy take is there’s obviously a bit of a scale where it’s like, okay, yes, at a very deficient standpoint, you would be looking at something like that. But, there is a space in between there and what we would call optimal, where there are other downsides, even as an example, just changes in bone marrow density rather than like straight up rickets, for example. Even then, looking at a bunch of other things, like it’s linked with a lot of things such as mood, IBS, athletic performance to a certain degree.
Like it’s a pretty endless list that vitamin D is linked to, but this creates a bit of a dilemma we have that is because it comes from the sun, if somebody’s low in vitamin D or if low vitamin D is associated with stuff, is this just low sun exposure? For example, if you went and looked in hospitals for people who had been in hospitals for like two plus weeks as an example, and you measure vitamin D status, they’re more likely to be low because they’ve been in hospital for two plus weeks.
That’s not necessarily why they have been in hospital. We see this in many cases in many other areas as well. I think it’s pretty easy to solve for that problem. And why I think that’s easy to solve for is we can just switch our lens to mostly just looking at research. We get people who are deficient and you supplement with vitamin D and see what happens. We have less of that research than I’d absolutely love.
We have a fair bit of research where you’re supplementing vitamin D at a population level, but we know based on a population level that although vitamin D insufficiency is relatively prevalent, you’re still going to be including a lot of people in that study who are not insufficient at the start, which could skew it. And then it also skews based on how severe the insufficiency is or deficiency, where it’s like, you’re going to see more benefit if they’re like fully deficient than if they are insufficient.
There’s a few things there, but like something that I see as a very common theme is a lot of the conditions, not all, but a lot of the conditions that it is linked to, if you get somebody who is deficient or insufficient, you often see small improvements and I also think it’s a space where you’re not likely to see it as this magical thing that solves everything because of the conditions that I listed, there’s so many things going on. It’s not like this is the only thing that matters. So even if you see a small improvement, I view that as a big win overall because there’s just another way of chipping away at that and getting a positive outcome.
Leah:
Yeah, I feel like rectifying vitamin D deficiency or like suboptimal intake. It’s like, yeah, it’s not going to be a game changer for any one specific thing. But, it will likely have a small impact on so many different things and that in itself is pretty cool. The last one we’re going to touch on today is technically not a micronutrient, but still worth noting and that is going to be fibre. So, there is a ton of interesting charts correlating increased fibre intake with reduced risk of chronic disease and up to a pretty surprisingly high intake.
The common recommendations for fibre intake are 30 grams per day for men and 25 grams per day for women as kind of the minimum we’d like to hit. But the majority of the population does consistently get lower than that recommendation. Another recommendation we could make is a little bit more nuanced and that’s trying to get 12 to 15 grams of fibre per 1000 calories consumed. I personally really like this one because it scales a bit more to different intakes and people’s requirements are obviously going to be very different based on body size and activity, and something like scaling like this, I think that can be beneficial in many circumstances.
On average, going even higher fibre has been linked with further reduced risk of chronic disease. So, you could absolutely kind of keep it at the minimum, but if you’re wanting to get more of a benefit in regards to reduced risk, it actually may be worth going higher than that 25 to 30 grams per day. But just noting that there are some downsides to that. When you do get too high, you could experience gastrointestinal issues, like extensive bloating.
And there are clients that I absolutely work with in the plant-based spectrum who are getting like 70, 80 grams of fibre per day. And then I’m like, why am I so bloated all the time? And I’m like, well, obviously it’s the huge fibre intake. It’s just, it’s a lot. So for those particular clients, we will pull back a little bit, but it’s still beneficial to keep that as high as what can be tolerated.
Two other key notes are one, the pursuit of a higher fibre intake through food also likely increases your intake of other nutrients by proxy. So, things like magnesium, potassium and iron. Obviously this is not as relevant if you’re taking just a fibre supplement, but if you’re looking to get it through food, it’s usually going to be these like quite nutrient dense whole foods. So, you will be likely getting a ton of micronutrients outside of just having the fibre intake.
So there can be a little bit of a domino effect there. And number two, if increasing fibre, just take it slow. I always say start low and go slow. So if you’re already in a low place, just slowly increase your fibre intake, make those changes as your gut actually adapts to them. So, if you were consistently consuming 12 grams of fibre per day, and then you’re like, yep, I’m gonna hit my 30 grams plus per day, just overnight, then you probably would experience some gastrointestinal symptoms, where it’s probably better that you just slowly increase that over several weeks.
Aidan:
That covers all of the eight nutrients or? I suppose, yeah, we’ll put fibre in that. That covers all eight nutrients that we are talking about today. And that is kind of point that I was talking about with the vitamin D thing, about how if you address this one thing, it’s still just one thing, right? This kind of applies to most of these things. I reckon iron is possibly the one that I see the most noticeable change in when people address it.
But in all of these cases, if you were just one of them by itself, it might not solve everything. But say you had all eight of these below ideal amounts, definitely addressing it is probably going to make you feel better overall and have positive health outcomes. And these are common ones, so they’re definitely worth looking into in some capacity.
But apart from that, this has been episode 212 of the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. As always, if you haven’t already, if you could please leave a rating and review, we would massively appreciate that.