I’ve been working on this a while, and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not worth the trouble of trying to get every nutrient within the IOM recommendations. For one, I’ve found that some of the assumptions upon which the recommendations were made do not apply to my situation. For example, the IOM recommends no more than 3.6g of chloride per day. That recommendation is derived from the recommendation for sodium and is based on the assumption that all chloride in the diet comes from sodium chloride. That assumption does not hold in my case, because I take a considerable amount of potassium chloride (salt substitute). I do think it’s worth it to try to eat a healthy diet, but I’m not going to analyze my diet to death unless there’s a specific problem I’m having. I’d like to have some comprehensive blood work done to make sure my chloride, potassium, sodium, etc are in the normal ranges. If they are and my doctor isn’t overly worried about my diet, then I’m not going to worry about it either. Otherwise, I’ll have to adjust. 15 months ago

I’ve always wanted a food that I could eat everyday without having to worry about whether I was getting enough of or too much of some particular nutrient. Through trial-and-error I’ve gotten there except for a few minor points that I’d like to straighten out. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) distinguishes between magnesium that is sourced from supplements and magnesium that comes from food. I haven’t yet analyzed my diet’s magnesium in detail yet. I also need to add the nutrient data for some of the ingredients I use to get more a more accurate picture of my intake. I also want to analyze water for mineral content. I’ll be finished when I am able to come up with a parameterized recipe that will allow me to change the amount of calories to suit my needs while guaranteeing that I remain within the IOM boundaries. 17 months ago