One thing people don’t understand about being poor is how much mental energy it takes every single day.
You’re constantly calculating:
genuinely annoyed at myself for not catching this sooner. so there's a thing called "buffered" magnesium glycinate. basically manufacturers mix in magnesium oxide, which is dirt cheap and poorly absorbed, to inflate the elemental magnesium number on the label.
most people, including me until recently, never notice because the front of the pack says "magnesium glycinate" and that's that. the way to actually check: elemental magnesium percentage. real, unbuffered magnesium glycinate sits at around 10–14%. if you're seeing 20%+ on the label, oxide has been added. the chemistry just doesn't work out otherwise.
ingredient list. if magnesium oxide appears anywhere in there, the product is buffered. doesn't matter how prominently "glycinate" is written on the front. i came across a decent breakdown of this while researching magnesium glycinate, which explained the buffering thing clearly and was where i first saw the elemental percentage rule laid out properly.
switched to a fully chelated product after this. the bloating i'd been having reduced noticeably, though i'll admit i can't say for certain how much of that is placebo vs actually cutting out the oxide. either way the label checking habit has stuck. takes about 30 seconds with any product before you buy.