Randomized controlled trials in nutrition are flawed because they don't account for individual baseline nutrient levels, unlike pharmaceutical drug trials where participants start with zero of the drug.

“randomized control trials in this field of nutrition are very different than the gold standard of randomized controlled trials that are used with pharmaceutical drugs so we know that 45 % of the population has insufficient magnesium intake okay so 55% have sufficient levels of magnesium so when you're starting a clinical trial in nutrition with something like magnesium half the population of in that trial are going to are going to need that magnesium supplement and the other half really aren't because they've already got sufficient magnesium intake this is very different from a drug trial everyone at the start of a drug Tri trial has the same amount of drug in in their system which is zero”