Looking beyond milk for your calcium fix

Looking beyond milk for your calcium fix

Your mum wasn’t wrong in forcing you to drink that glass of milk before leaving for school. Dairy products like milk, yogurt and cheese are the best-known sources of calcium. For most of our adult life, we need roughly 1000 mg (1 gram) of calcium per day. Taking enough calcium through childhood and adulthood makes sure you don’t lose bone later in life. Ninety nine per cent of the body’s calcium is in bones and teeth and rest in blood and tissues. Your body gets it from food or supplements. In the absence of adequate calcium intake, it is obtained by draining the bones, which weakens them. Some people are intolerant to dairy products while some dislike them. Whole milk, yogurt and cheese are also rich in saturated fat, which is a problem in people predisposed to high cholesterol levels and heart disease. Studies have also shown a link between too much dairy consumption and a risk of ovarian cancer in women and prostate cancer in men. But there are plenty of non-dairy foods that are rich in this mineral. Some of them are green leafy vegetables (spinach, mustard greens, collard), broccoli, fortified soy milk and beans. Oatmeal, almonds and dried figs are all calcium rich. Combining a bowl of oats topped with a few roasted almonds and a couple of dried figs for breakfast can start your day on a calcium high. Nothing beats Til-Chikki (sesame brittle) for a calcium rich snack. 1 oz of til has around 280 grams of calcium, which equals that from one glass of milk. Next time you go to the vegetable market, pick turnips with their green tops intact because1 cup of cooked turnip greens has around 200 mg. Make this as a saag or add it to your dal. Arugula is a delicious salad green, that you can also wilt and add to pasta. A cup of raw greens serves up 125 mg of Calcium. Fishlike sardines packed in oil with their bones are also a rich source of thisbone-building mineral.