“His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy”

 

If this famous Eminem lyric from his song Lose Yourself rings true to you, chances are you would need to build stronger bones such that you can keep up with the stresses of life. This is also so that you would have no problem doing daily tasks or going out without having to worry about having physical trouble doing so. Now, as with everything, moderation is key. Hence, a balanced diet is crucial to maintain strong bones and part of that diet would have to be ingredients and food items that are full of all the good stuff, such as calcium and Vitamin D, necessary to do that. We have categorized the items below by types of food group.

 

Meats

 

The positive of eating a meat full of calcium is that you also get your protein intake. However, if you are looking for a meat with highest amounts of calcium specifically, you could opt for fish, especially ones where it is possible to consume their bones as well such as sardines and pilchards. Canned sardines which you would find at the supermarket would consist around 320mg of calcium for every ounce. You could also go for canned salmon, which would consist 200mg every 3 ounces.

 

Vegetables

 

There is a reason why your parents used to (maybe still do) ask you to eat your vegetables. Other than the multitude of advantages of consuming vegetables, there are also certain vegetables which consists of a good amount of calcium. This includes green leafy vegetables such as broccoli (90mg/cup) or kale (90mg/cup). 1 cup of turnip greens would produce 200mg of calcium. More stalky vegetable options would be food such as okra.

 

Dairy

 

It should come to no surprise to you that the food most recommended for calcium intake is milk to maintain strong bones. 1 cup of non-fat, whole or lactose reduced milk produces about 300mg of calcium. 8 ounces of calcium-fortified soy milk would produce 80-500mg of calcium depending on the type of soy milk you get. It is best to read the nutritional label on the side of each carton such that you know exactly how much calcium you are getting exactly. If you are looking snack, the most delicious and calcium dense dairy product is yoghurt, which contains about 300-400mg of calcium per cup.

 

Grains & Seeds

 

Great thing about this category is that there are options for any meal, be it breakfast, lunch or dinner. For breakfast, on top of milk, you could go for cereal which, depending on what type of cereal you get, could range from 100mg all the way to 1000mg of calcium per cup. For lunch and dinner, you may go for calcium-rich food such as tofu or soya beans which can be incorporated in a lot of dishes. For snacks, a trail mix of nuts could give you about 120mg for every 100 grams of nuts.