What is the main source of calcium? Many of you may answer “milk!”
Surely, we find calcium in milk, but are we really sure that it is the food that contains the most par excellence? This is one of the many notions about nutrition that are seen as dogmas and passed down for generations, but that should nevertheless be reviewed, “retouched”. For Calcium… is milk the best food?
Each natural food is made up of hundreds of substances that cooperate with each other. But there are foods that contain much greater quantities of certain substances in doses than others. Fortunately, we do not find calcium only in milk and its derivatives (cheeses, yogurt): to be precise, the calcium that comes from these sources is not easily absorbed by our organism, and on the contrary, the digestion of such foods in turn requires a subtraction of calcium and other alkaline minerals from our bones.
In fact, they cause excessive acidification of the organism because to assimilate the calcium it recovers from these foods, it has to subtract from its reserves, that is, the bones. In fact, there would be much more cases of osteoporosis in those populations that take high amounts of calcium through dairy products, as demonstrated by the larger study on the subject published in 1983 in the pages of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Calcium on food and vegetables
It is good to know that there are several foods of vegetable origin rich in this mineral. Considering that milk contains about 120 mg of calcium per 100g of product and that an adult’s daily requirement is about 1000mg of calcium, let’s make a small comparison:
- Sesame seeds 1000 mg
- Chia seeds > 600 mg
- Dried or dried fruits (almonds, hazelnut nuts, pistachios and dried figs) up to 266 mg
- Flaxseeds 256 mg
- Legumes (soybeans, beans, lentils) 50-170 mg
- Molasses 172 mg per tablespoon
- Cabbage 136 mg
- Oranges 70 mg
- Thistles, broccoli, cabbage, algae, turnip tops, 56 mg
In addition, the water of many Italian cities is quite rich in calcium: inform yourself at your aqueduct. Many mineral waters are also rich in calcium, there are ones that contain more than 200 mg per liter (read the label!). For Calcium… is milk the best food?
The question at this point is this: why have certain foods been transformed into the symbol of a substance, if they are not the only/best sources? Is it because I am the subject of a kind of “great advertising operation”? Or maybe they are simply ruling of the table that remain written in the minds of all of us… In any case, let us take advantage of this data and try to feed ourselves with quality and “cum grano salis“, to connect with another of our articles.
