Printed in U.S.A. A Simple Method for Estimating

diets at various caloric levels can be es-timated from food composition tables or determined by laboratory analysis of an aliquot of the homogenized, hydrolyzed diet. While magnesium contents of many foods are available in several publications, relatively few studies have reported mag-nesium contents and caloric levels of total daily diets. Results from some of these stud-ies suggest a magnesium content of 9.5-60.5 mEq in diets containing 1,500-6,780 cal (1-3). One of these studies reported a mean dietary magnesium content of 28.3 mEq/3,000 cal (2). In 1964, Seelig (4), after extensively reviewing the literature to that time, concluded that occidental diets pro-vide an average daily magnesium intake of 20.8-25 mEq. The purposes of this study were to: a) determine whether differences existed be-tween magnesium contents of constant and regular hospital diets within the same caloric ranges; b) to reexamine the magnesium content of mixed diets a