Posts Tagged ‘calcium’
July 14th, 2009 | 
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Collard Greens for Supper (Alisa Cooper)
This one hits home for me – my mom’s already been diagnosed with osteoporosis and has had some spinal surgery related to it.
It doesn’t seem too hard to get adequate calcium in a day, since I do eat dairy products – is it? I’m not real keen on plain milk, though I do use soy milk on cereals, and flavored soy milk to drink. I eat a fair bit of cheese and yogurt. Back to the numbers.
I need 1000 mg of calcium per day, so that looks like:
| soy milk, plain or vanilla | 1/2 c | 150 mg (299 mg/cup) |
| cheese, part skim mozzarella | 2 oz | 444 mg(222 mg/oz) |
| lowfat yogurt | 8 oz container | 415 mg |
That’s just about right, if one doesn’t mind eating predominantly dairy for their calcium – what else is a good source?
Looking at the USDA list was a real surprise. Collards (357 mg/cup) and sardines (325 mg/3 oz) are above plain milk (306 mg/cup nonfat)? And cornmeal (483 mg/cup) above all three? The good news for the day, if you have a sweet tooth like mine, is that thick vanilla milkshakes are high up on the list (457 mg/11 oz, if you don’t mind 351 calories). And I’m curious as to why nonfat yogurt has more calcium than low fat yogurt. Anyone know this? I’ll make a note to look it up.
I can see I’m going to have to find more greens recipes so we’re not relying too heavily on dairy products. What if you don’t eat dairy? I will see if I can track down some recommendations for the lactose-intolerant. What are your favorite non-dairy calcium sources?
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