Leah:
Hello and welcome to the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. I am Leah Heigl and I’m here with my c -host Aidan Muir and this is episode 138 which means that we are now over two and a half years of doing weekly podcasts which I just thought was cool milestone and pretty insane.
Aidan:
That’s wild, yeah.
Leah:
So getting on to today’s topic.
Dairy has been considered the gold standard calcium source for decades. And this does make a lot of sense considering that dairy is often a very calcium rich food source that has a great bioavailability of calcium compared to a lot of different plant-based sources. And it’s also widely consumed by a lot of the world. So in many countries, dairy was already a huge product being consumed.
So just made sense for that for us to drive recommendations around calcium through dairy. But dairy isn’t for everyone. There are reasons why someone might not want to consume a ton of dairy products or dairy products at all. So things like transitioning to a plant-based diet or lactose intolerance, dairy allergies, different things like that. So today’s episode is going to be all about how you can meet calcium requirements without dairy products. So not saying anything bad about dairy products, but if you happen to not want to consume them, this is how you can still get enough calcium.
Aidan:
The first place we’re going to start is by talking about why calcium matters and kind of how much you need as well. So the main thing that should obviously jump to everybody’s mind when we’re talking about why calcium matters is bone health, obviously, and bone mineral density. So when we’re looking at how much we require according to things like the recommended daily intake, we’re looking at numbers like a thousand milligrams per day for most adults, postmenopausal women, jumps up to 1,300 milligrams, and then for men over the age of 70, it jumps up to 1 ,300 as well.
The postmenopausal thing is just related to oestrogen decreasing and bone mineral density typically decreasing alongside that, unless hormone replacement therapy is introduced. But over the age of 70 for everybody, it would still be that higher requirement, just because obviously bone marrow density matters more from a fracture perspective then.
Obviously calcium matters for a lot of things outside of just bone marrow density, but the really high requirements are more specific to that because one of the things that really matters is that if your blood levels of calcium start to drop, your body starts to steal calcium from the bone. This is part of why calcium on a blood test isn’t really a reliable indicator of if you’ve got enough calcium coming in just because of homeostasis. If it’s stealing from the bone. That’s partly how osteoporosis and osteopenia can kind of occur.
One thing that is worth paying attention to though is that calcium is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to bone health. just, it is an important piece, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle. There are plenty of populations around the world who have significantly lower calcium requirements or calcium intakes who have quite good bone mineral density as well, which kind of makes a bit of an argument for we might not necessarily need to hit 1000 milligrams per day or higher, if we have all the other variables on point, right?
If we’re exercising, if we have a high intake of a lot of the other nutrients that matter. But the reason why I think it’s important for us to chuck numbers out there like this and then also give comparisons about how much calcium is in food is because although you might not need to get to 1000 milligrams, which is quite a high target, if you assess your own diet and you’re like, hey, I’m getting like 300 milligrams, I’m quite far from that target. It could be a bit of a reason to look at increasing your calcium intake.
Leah:
Totally. So we’ll start off with looking at the three best non-dairy sources of calcium and ones that I recommend a lot in practice. So calcium fortified products are a big one. So if we’re not consuming a ton of dairy, we can look to things like calcium fortified plant milks and ensuring that there is around 120 milligrams of calcium per 100 mils. That’s a really good kind of standard target that makes it very comparable to dairy milk.
Other things like some vegan and dairy free cheeses made with plants in Australia is a really good example of that that is calcium fortified and has around 300 milligrams of calcium per 40 gram serve. Some of my other favourite calcium fortified products that are non-dairy based would be the berry orange juice with added calcium. So that has around 200 milligrams per 200 mL serve.
Plant-based energy Milo, another one of my favourites. So that has around 180 milligrams per 20 gram, one tablespoon serving size and things like the Vita Soy Soy Yogurt that is also calcium-enriched with around 200 milligrams per 160 gram serving size. So you can see how you can kind of very easily get to that, well, mostly easily, to that 1000 milligram per day marker by even just focusing on having these calcium fortified products regularly.
Another thing that I really like to suggest outside of the plant-based world is things like fish with bones. So sardines are a really good option if you like sardines. I know a lot of people don’t but if you do could be a great win. And I also recommend the John West calcium-enriched range a lot. So essentially what they do with that tuna and salmon range that’s canned is that they break the bones down into a powder and then just enrich that with the bones essentially. So you’re still getting the calcium without having to necessarily eat the bones, which a lot of people don’t like to do.
Aidan:
And that one specifically from memory, they’re like 800 milligrams of calcium. don’t know you know. Insane. Yeah, it’s insanely high. It’s so high that it makes you ask questions because we’re going to talk about calcium supplementation later.
Typically when you supplement calcium, like say you’re looking at 1200 milligrams, you typically split it up to two separate doses morning and night, because we can only absorb so much in a single hit. And like the John West one is so high in calcium, it’s like above that number that we typically start splitting it, which is crazy. There are plenty of other non-dairy calcium sources that are not fortified as well that we can look at, such as dark leafy green vegetables, kale, bok choy, spinach, put broccoli in that category as well.
They’re fairly calcium rich. They typically contain anywhere between 50 to 150 milligrams of calcium per cup. But the catch there is that it is cooked weight. It’s a lot of kale and cooked vegetables. It’s a lot basically. If we were putting a comparison out there, a cup of cow’s milk is 250 to 300 milligrams of calcium. So we’re looking at say like two to three cups of cooked kale to kind of get to the equivalent of that and it’s quite high.
I believe almonds come similarly. Off the top of my head, like 30 grams of almonds is like 70 milligrams of calcium. And this is probably why I like putting numbers around these things because if we just left it as dark green vegetables are a source of calcium without the numbers, there’s kind of no context. With the numbers, it’s useful. Taking that a step further with some other options, sesame seeds contain around 150 milligrams of calcium per tablespoon. So it’s a decent amount of sesame seeds, but it’s not unachievable.
For example, let’s say you’re having avocado and toast and you put a tablespoon of sesame seeds on top of that. That doesn’t seem too unachievable and it can help reach these targets. It is worth noting that calcium absorption from things like nuts and seeds is a little bit lower than other options as well. So that’s something to factor in. Then a final one is that blackstrap molasses is a pretty good source of calcium too. We’ve 200 milligrams per tablespoon, which is about 15 grams of blackstrap molasses. How common is blackstrap molasses?
Leah:
I don’t think I’ve ever had a client be like, you know what I love? Blackstrap molasses.
Aidan:
So like it is a good source, like stating a bit of the obvious, but like these things obviously only matter if you’re having them consistently as well. Yeah. And not just every now and then.
Leah:
Another one that can be very beneficial if you like tofu is looking for a calcium set tofu as well. The ones that are set with calcium salt. So if it has in the ingredients list, either calcium sulfate or in Australia also additive 516 that can actually be a very calcium rich option the evergreen hard tofu in Woolworths is one of my favourites and that has around 350 milligrams of calcium per 100 gram serving size So again, like just a really really awesome high calcium option that is not dairy based.
The next thing we will touch on briefly is lactose intolerance I feel like we’ve talked about lactose intolerance a lot lately, a lot of different episodes, but here we are again. If you do suffer from lactose intolerance, you may still choose to include dairy products that are naturally low lactose or ones that also have the lactase enzyme added into them. So that can still be a great way to meet your calcium requirements, particularly if like the plant-based options, tofu, fish isn’t really your thing.
So you don’t necessarily need to avoid dairy completely, even if you are quite sensitive to lactose. So some great options here would obviously be things like your lactose free milk, things like Zymil, lactose-free yogurt, yoghurt with the lactase enzyme added. You can also use lactase tablets alongside higher lactose foods. So things like your Lacteeze and also hard cheeses, including things like Parmesan, Swiss and cheddar in moderate portions actually are pretty low lactose naturally. So are usually pretty well tolerated by those with lactose intolerance.
Aidan:
The final thing we’ll talk through is calcium supplements. So if you are very unlikely to meet your calcium needs through food, it’s another scenario where supplementation makes sense. We typically always encourage a food first approach, but calcium supplementation can make sense under these circumstances.
When looking at the research on calcium and bone health directly, it doesn’t look as promising as you’d like, but there is a few reasons for that. One is if you look at the research through the lens of higher dose calcium supplementation, so say around 1,200 milligrams or higher, the research looks more promising.
And two, if you look at it from the perspective of going to the groups who actually took their supplements versus the intention to treat group, like, what I’m saying is because calcium supplements are annoying to take, because you have to take them twice a day, if you get a massive sample size of like 2000 plus people and you get them to take calcium supplements and you see what happens in two years, a lot of them are not still taking it every day, twice a day. If you then change the sample inside there to be people who actually taking it, the results look more promising.
A third thing on that note is that I came back to this concept of like calcium matters but it’s not everything. Like it doesn’t, it’s not the only thing that matters in bone mineral density. So I would be looking at it from that perspective as well. And then other stuff we see as specific examples is I think we would have talked about this in a previous podcast where we were looking at low energy availability and looking about the impacts on bone mineral density, how bone mineral density decreases with low energy availability.
Guidelines in relation to that are recommending 1,500 milligrams from calcium supplementation because that’s what the research is showing is the best approach to restore bone mineral density in situations like that. And that’s from supplements in addition to food in that case. I typically wouldn’t recommend people going that high. It’s very high.
But the key thing at minimum is if you looked at your own diet, did some quick maths, maybe used an app like chronometer, which can measure micronutrient intake, and you came to the conclusion that you were well short of the calcium recommended daily intakes, it probably makes sense to take a supplement.
Leah:
Yeah, absolutely. So overall, if you’re not a big dairy consumer or it’s something that you don’t consume at all, there are absolutely options that you can choose to still meet your calcium requirements. So things like your calcium fortified products, fish with bones and all those other kinds of bonus options that we did mention that can be helpful to a lesser degree but still add to your overall calcium intake. And then of course, always supplementation if you feel like you need it.
This has been episode 138 of the podcast. As always, thank you for listening. And if you have not left a rating and review, we would massively appreciate it if you did.