Significant first presence of Mg Symposium at Experimental Biology, a large USA conference.

Nutritional magnesium intake from foods in the United States of America (USA) is widely below individual daily requirements [1]. Magnesium in USA has been called the “orphan nutrient” by Robert Heaney due to its lack of attention by the USA nutrition research community during the 20 century – a time of prolific and varied nutrition research progress. USA’s Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) first published food values for Ca, P and Fe in 1945; Mg content did not appear regularly in these large food tables until after 1977. Beyond its large study of USA population’s serum Mg, 1971-74, NHANES does not measure or make available to researchers any blood or urinary Mg values among its vast array of measurements on a representative sampling of USA humans. Standard medical laboratory assessments do not routinely include serum, red blood cell (RBC) or urinary magnesium. For these reasons, it was especially gratifying that Experimental Biology (EB) hosted, at its 2010 meeting in Anaheim, California, its first Magnesium Symposium since the inception of this large USA conference. EB meets annually in the USA, drawing over 10,000 attendees from its consortium of scientific societies. Dedicated to the Memory of Dr. Mildred Seelig and sponsored by both American Society for Nutrition and The American Physiological Society, this first EB Magnesium Symposium had a generous major corporate sponsor in the Almond Board of California as well as funding from Blaine Pharmaceuticals and Adobe Springs. The Symposium was created and coordinated by the Center for Magnesium Education & Research. Well attended, the 250-capacity conference room remained full for the entire 2-hour symposium where four excellent presentations were followed by a robust question/ discussion session. This first EB Magnesium Symposium of 2010 is pleased to publish our following four papers in Magnesium Research. A significant contribution to defray publication costs of these papers was donated by the Almond Board of California, the major sponsor of the Symposium that represents the growers/ suppliers of one of the highest sources of food magnesium – almonds. It has been estimated that consumption of only 1.5 oz (42.5 g) of almonds per day by individuals would ease the large nutritional magnesium intake shortfall in the USA substantially. The preventive potential of such magnesium-rich foods warrants their inclusion in the research pursuits of the world’s magnesium researchers, and it is to these researchers that the papers from this First EB Magnesium Symposium is dedicated.