Cultural Anthropology - Magnesium

The Significance of Magnesium in our bodies and in society

In short, this article written by Georgina Drew talks about the significance of Magnesium in a society, and more specifically in their drinking water. She had been traveling from Kathmandu to New Delhi, and the first instance where she had noticed the significance of Magnesium within the water's components was on the flight itself, where the flight attendants had given out tiny water bottles. Each bottle had a label that said if there were any silver particles seen within the water, that those are just there to show the water's "unique mineral composition." It was also mentioned that instead of listing a calorie count on the bottle, it lists a count of 100 micrograms of calcium and 50 micrograms of magnesium per serving. 
After she had landed in New Delhi, Georgina writes that she had then filled the same exact bottle with an RO, or reverse osmosis water filter in her friends sink. This invention had then grown very popular in India as it purifies the water of any elements, whether they were bad or good, and turns/transforms it into "purer water." This type of water has long been preferred in many other countries, including India, as the urban citizens in those areas had grown untrusting of how the unfiltered water was handled and what it contained in terms of different types of minerals.
Yet, when she had gone to meet an environmental architect in New Delhi, he had said that the technology was "unimaginably stupid," because RO usually wastes about three liters of unfiltered water to just filter and purify one liter. This unfiltered water then goes to the lower income residents, who then boil it to make it more "purified" as well. The architect then mentions how he feels about how residents now assume that RO water is how all water is supposed to taste, while they avoid the more mineral rich water from wells and such, which doesn't help the conservation of those types of infrastructures. In addition, there is a great significance of magnesium for our bodies. It was found that when you lack magnesium in your body, you then get symptoms of fatigue, muscle spasms, seizures, etc. It was also found that it can help combat against depression, and boosts your immune system as well. 
All of this evidence shows how important magnesium is to our society, yet why are people still trying to filter it out of their water? Actually, currently in South Asia, these older RO devices are being replaced with a new invention that add calcium and magnesium back into the final filtering of the water, to keep the good nutrients in the water, while still keeping it purified of the bad elements like lead, etc. At the very end of this article, Georgina then starts briefly talking about the age of when us as humans still had lots of natural elements in our lives and/or bodies. She then goes on to say that in now in this current age, we are taking so many natural minerals and elements out of our world and body, that we are getting to the point where won't be able to process the truly natural elements within our world. An example of this being the RO water filters that we are now using to purify our water to the point that it has no beneficial elements for our health and body within them anymore, which will lead to our bodies not being able to process natural elements like magnesium and calcium, the ones that are greatly needed for our system.

 Source: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/magnesium

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