Foods for Bone Health: Get Your Calcium Here! - Prevention

Foods for Bone Health: Get Your Calcium Here!

Meet your daily requirements for calcium with these dairy foods and vegetables

Getting enough calcium from your diet can be tricky. According to the Institute of Medicine, Americans consume about 72% of their dietary calcium from milk, cheese, and yogurt and from foods to which dairy products are added, such as pizza and ice cream. The rest is derived from vegetables (7%); grains (5%); legumes (4%); fruit (3%); meat, poultry, and fish (3%); eggs (2%), and miscellaneous foods (3%).

While people can absorb about 30% of the calcium in dairy and fortified foods (such as orange juice, tofu made with calcium sulfate, and soy milk), absorption is about twice as high from certain green vegetables, such as broccoli, bok choy, and kale.

Much less calcium is absorbed from foods with high levels of oxalic acid—spinach, collard greens, sweet potatoes, rhubarb, and beans—and eating spinach with milk, for example, also reduces the calcium you can absorb from the milk. The calcium in foods that are high in phytic acid—whole grains, wheat bran, beans, seeds, nuts, and soy isolates—is also poorly absorbed, but these foods do not block absorption from other calcium-rich foods like milk.
Best Exercises for Bone Health (click on blue highlighted words to view exercises)

Food	Amount	Calcium (mg) Per Serving
Yogurt, plain, low-fat	8 oz	415
Sardines, canned, with bones	3 oz	325
Cheddar cheese	1.5 oz	306
Milk, fat-free	1 cup	299
Milk, 2%	1 cup	293
Milk, whole	1 cup	276
Mozzarella, part-skim	1.5 oz	310
Yogurt, fruit, low-fat	8 oz	345
Orange juice, fortified	6 oz	378
Tofu, firm	1/4 block	163
Salmon, canned	3 oz	183
Cottage cheese, 1%	1 cup	138
Tofu, soft	1/2 cup	138
Spinach, cooked	1/2 cup	123
Calcium-fortified cereal	1 cup	100-1,000
Instant breakfast drink	8 oz	105-250
Frozen yogurt, vanilla soft-serve	1/2 cup	103
Turnip greens, boiled	1/2 cup	99
Ice cream, vanilla	1/2 cup	84
Soy beverage, fortified	8 oz	80-500
Broccoli, raw	1/2 cup	21
Cream cheese	1 Tbsp	14

Read more: http://www.prevention.com/health/health-concerns/dietary-sources-calcium#ixzz2EiKRlnJQ