You typed "magnesium foods" into a search bar because someone told you magnesium helps with cramps, and now you want to know what to put in the cart. Here's the list, ranked by milligrams per serving, with the serving size stated on every row, because "spinach is high in magnesium" means nothing until you know it's half a cup boiled, not a handful of raw leaves.
Why magnesium foods matter around your period
The NIH sets the recommended intake at 310 mg a day for women aged 19 to 30 and 320 mg for women 31 to 50, and most of us miss it: an analysis of national survey data from 2013 to 2016 found that 48% of Americans take in less magnesium from food and drink than their estimated requirement. Only about 30 to 40% of what you eat is absorbed, which is one more reason to shop from the top of the table rather than the bottom.
The period connection rests on small, old trials, and we'd rather say that than oversell it. The one we cite most is a 1991 double-blind study of 32 women with PMS, who took magnesium from day 15 of the cycle until their period started and scored lower on the "negative affect" cluster of a standard symptom questionnaire than the placebo group did. Thirty-two women, one trial, 1991. ACOG's read is that magnesium supplements "may be helpful, but not enough research has been done" to recommend them for period pain. Food is the no-regrets version: you can't overdo magnesium from a bowl of beans, and you get the fiber and the protein with it.
Magnesium foods ranked by mg per serving
Every figure below is from the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements table except the dark chocolate row, which we worked out from the USDA FoodData Central entry for 70 to 85% dark chocolate: 228 mg per 100 g, so about 65 mg in a one-ounce serving. Percent Daily Value is against the 420 mg figure used on US labels, not the women's RDA, so a woman of 31 to 50 gets a bit more out of each row than the last column says.
| Rank | Food | Serving | Magnesium (mg) | % Daily Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pumpkin seeds, roasted | 1 ounce | 156 | 37% |
| 2 | Chia seeds | 1 ounce | 111 | 26% |
| 3 | Almonds, dry roasted | 1 ounce | 80 | 19% |
| 4 | Spinach, boiled | 1/2 cup | 78 | 19% |
| 5 | Cashews, dry roasted | 1 ounce | 74 | 18% |
| 6 | Dark chocolate, 70 to 85% cacao | 1 ounce | about 65 | 15% |
| 7 | Peanuts, oil roasted | 1/4 cup | 63 | 15% |
| 8 | Soymilk, plain or vanilla | 1 cup | 61 | 15% |
| 9 | Black beans, cooked | 1/2 cup | 60 | 14% |
| 10 | Edamame, shelled, cooked | 1/2 cup | 50 | 12% |
| 11 | Peanut butter, smooth | 2 tablespoons | 49 | 12% |
| 12 | Potato, baked with skin | 3.5 ounces | 43 | 10% |
| 13 | Brown rice, cooked | 1/2 cup | 42 | 10% |
| 14 | Yogurt, plain, low fat | 8 ounces | 42 | 10% |
| 15 | Oatmeal, instant | 1 packet | 36 | 9% |
How to read the servings
An ounce of pumpkin seeds or almonds is a small handful, about a quarter cup. Half a cup of boiled spinach starts as a big pile of raw leaves; it collapses. An ounce of dark chocolate is roughly a third of a standard 100 g bar, or three to four squares depending on the mold. Two tablespoons of peanut butter is what most people spread on one slice, generously. The 3.5-ounce potato is a small one, and the number drops if you leave the skin. Instant oatmeal is at the bottom of this list but it's still nine percent of a day before you've added anything to it.
A day of magnesium foods that reaches 320 mg
No supplements, no heroics. A packet of instant oatmeal at breakfast (36 mg). An ounce of almonds mid-morning (80 mg). Half a cup of black beans in a lunch bowl (60 mg). Half a cup of cooked spinach with dinner (78 mg). An ounce of dark chocolate after (about 65 mg). That's 319 mg, within a milligram of the RDA for a woman of 31 to 50, and it's a normal day of food. Swap the oatmeal for an ounce of chia stirred into yogurt and you clear 400. If you want the cramp-specific version of this list, including the foods that make cramps worse, it's in foods that ease period cramps.
What did not work for us
Trying to do it all with spinach. Half a cup boiled is fine at dinner; three of them a day is a chore, and nobody on our team lasted a week. Chia in water, which turns into frogspawn. And reading the table as a scoreboard: the pumpkin seed row looks like the answer, but an ounce a day, every day, gets old by Thursday. Spreading it across seeds, beans, grains and chocolate is what we actually keep doing, and we'll admit the chocolate row is the one that gets us through the week before a period. The full argument for dark chocolate, with the magnesium and flavanol evidence and its limits, is in why dark chocolate helps period cramps.
That row is also why we ended up making a bar. Girl Chocolate is a dark chocolate bar for the days around your period, with magnesium and other functional ingredients, sold as a pouch of eight bars so one pouch covers one cycle. Supports PMS relief*. The magnesium amount is printed on the pack, and we'd rather you read it there than trust a blog. If you're curious, here's the bar, and the Period Type quiz will tell you which days of your cycle it's for.
Print our free PMS week meal plan: five days of meals built from calcium and magnesium foods, plus a grocery list. 1 page, PDF, no email needed.
Download the PDFSources
- NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, Magnesium fact sheet for health professionals (RDA table, food table, NHANES intake data)
- USDA FoodData Central, Chocolate, dark, 70-85% cacao solids (FDC ID 170273)
- Facchinetti 1991, oral magnesium and premenstrual mood changes, Obstet Gynecol (PubMed)
- ACOG, Dysmenorrhea: painful periods
When to talk to a doctor
Food is for ordinary periods. See a doctor if you have any of these:
- Pain that stops you doing daily life, even with painkillers
- Bleeding through a pad or tampon every hour
- Pain that suddenly got much worse, or changed its pattern
- Pain with a fever
* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
