Getting enough calcium

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Getting enough calcium

Virtually everybody in America gets enough calcium. Something interesting to think about is we are, outside of some Scandinavian countries, we drink more milk and eat more cheese than in any other country and we have more osteoporosis than in any developed country which makes you want to say, huh. We're getting calcium like crazy from milk, from cheese and other dairy products and yet women starting at age 30, or 40 or 50 are plagued with one of the worst medical conditions; their bones are getting thin because of lack of calcium and the reason is simple. When you eat a standard american diet, which is salty and high in protein you end up, when you take in sodium chloride you end up needing to excrete chloride which gets excreted as calcium chloride. When you eat a lot of meat, you end up with what are known as phosphate and sulfate waste which have to be excreted in urine and stool as calcium phosphate and calcium sulfate. If you eat a standard american diet, you can't keep up on the amount of calcium that you need. But if instead you shift to a diet with lots of broccoli, which has a couple hundred milligrams of calcium and other dark greens which have some calcium and other non dairy calciums, you'll get as much as you need. By the way, there is no general agreement on how much calcium children need. We used to say a thousand milligrams a day but the latest food pyramids and equivalents don't say that. We think that it's somewhere between 400 and 800 milligrams but nobody is sure.
ALL PARENTS, Nutrition



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