Broccoli is not high in magnesium. A cup of raw chopped broccoli contains about 19 mg of magnesium, which is roughly 5% of what most adults need daily. By FDA standards, a food qualifies as “high” in a nutrient only when it delivers 20% or more of the Daily Value per serving, so broccoli falls well short of that threshold.
That doesn’t make broccoli nutritionally useless for magnesium. It contributes a small amount alongside other nutrients that work together, and it’s the kind of food most people could stand to eat more of. But if you’re specifically trying to boost your magnesium intake, broccoli shouldn’t be your primary strategy.
How Broccoli Compares to Magnesium-Rich Foods
The gap between broccoli and top magnesium sources is enormous. A cup of roasted pumpkin seeds delivers 649 mg of magnesium. A cup of dry-roasted almonds provides 385 mg. Even canned spinach reaches 131 mg per cup. Broccoli’s 19 mg per cup puts it in the same general range as raw spinach (24 mg per cup), which also isn’t considered a concentrated magnesium source in its uncooked form.
Among vegetables, broccoli lands in a middle tier. A review of vegetable magnesium content found that broccoli, kale, artichoke, avocado, and green peas all fall in a similar range of 21 to 32 mg per 100 grams. These are decent contributions to your overall intake across a full day of eating, but none of them come close to seeds, nuts, or legumes as standalone magnesium sources.
How Much Magnesium You Actually Need
The recommended daily intake varies by age and sex. Adult men need 400 to 420 mg per day, while adult women need 310 to 320 mg. Those numbers mean you’d need to eat roughly 17 to 22 cups of raw broccoli in a day to meet your full requirement from broccoli alone.
Most people get magnesium from a patchwork of foods throughout the day: whole grains at breakfast, nuts as a snack, leafy greens and beans at dinner. Broccoli fits into that patchwork as a supporting player. If you eat a cup or two with dinner, you’re picking up 40 to 60 mg, which covers about 10 to 15% of your daily needs. Meaningful, but not sufficient on its own.
Absorption Works in Broccoli’s Favor
One thing broccoli has going for it is relatively clean absorption. Two of the biggest obstacles to magnesium absorption in plant foods are phytates (concentrated in seeds and grains) and oxalic acid (high in foods like spinach and beets). Phytates bind to magnesium in the gut and prevent your body from taking it up. Oxalic acid does something similar, forming complexes with magnesium in the intestine that your body can’t easily absorb.
Broccoli is low in both compounds compared to many other plant foods. Spinach, for example, may look impressive on paper for certain minerals, but its high oxalate content means your body absorbs less of what’s listed on the label. With broccoli, the modest amount of magnesium it contains is more readily available to your body. So the 19 mg per cup is closer to what you actually absorb, not just what passes through.
Where Broccoli Adds Real Value
If magnesium is your sole focus, broccoli isn’t the answer. But magnesium rarely works alone in the body, and broccoli delivers a combination of nutrients that complement each other. It’s a good source of vitamin K, vitamin C, calcium, and potassium, all of which play roles in bone health alongside magnesium. Calcium and vitamin D get most of the attention for bone density, but research shows magnesium and potassium are also important for osteoporosis prevention. Eating broccoli regularly means you’re getting small amounts of several bone-supporting nutrients in one package.
This is the practical reality of nutrition: very few people eat a single food to meet a single nutrient need. Broccoli won’t fix a magnesium deficiency, but it’s a consistently useful vegetable that chips in across multiple categories. If you’re concerned about your magnesium levels specifically, focus on pumpkin seeds, almonds, cashews, black beans, and whole grains as your heavy hitters, and let broccoli do what it does best as part of a broader diet.