A good way to estimate whether you’re getting enough calcium in your diet per day is the ABC method. This assumes of course that our bodies can absorb the calcium in milk and in fortified products, but let’s not go there for now.
If you’re between the ages of 19-50, your Recommended Daily Intake (RDI) is 1000 mg of calcium per day. Each serving of dairy product (a serving being 1 cup (250ml) of milk, 175 ml plain yogurt, or 50g of cheese), contains 300 mg of calcium. 1 cup of a calcium-fortified beverage also contains 300 mg of calcium.
So if you consider…
A = the number of servings of dairy products you have per day X 300mg
B = the number of calcium-fortified soy/rice/orange beverage servings X 300mg
C = accounts for calcium intake from other foods, estimated at 300 mg
Then, all you have to do is add A + B + C (i.e. A + B + 300), and see if the sum is 1000 mg- easy as pie!
Check out this interactive website. It is created by the BC Dairy Foundation though, so keep in mind that they do want you to consume more milk…
IMAGE CREDIT: here.
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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Education, Fitness, Food/Restaurants, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
well now I wanna know the deal with why our body might not be able to absorb calcium in milk and fortified products? Is it all a useless scam? :O
Hi Britt,
well, all the scientific/medical literature I have read seems to suggest that calcium from dairy products and calcium-fortified products IS absorbed by our bodies.
The reason I put that sentence is, is because I’ve had discussions with friends about the topic, and they feel that with all the hormones and god knows what in our milk that it’s doing us more harm than good. I can’t find ‘official’ literature to support that, but you never know…