Right from childhood, we have been taught that we just have to have our glass of milk because it is essential for having strong bones. Nobody tells us that vegetables and various beans and peas provide us more calcium, gram per gram, than do the dairy products. The best vegetable-based calcium sources are cabbage, beans, peas, corn and lentils. In fact, when you reduce your protein intake and increase the intake of these complex carbohydrates, your body absorbs calcium much more efficiently.
Making this change is all the more important for certain races such as Asian, Latin and Black who are less tolerant towards milk protein or milk sugar because production of a certain enzyme is inhibited in them. Due to this limitation, they are not able to digest dairy products and suffer bloating or distending of the stomach due to the rotting of the milk or dairy products in the stomach. In extreme cases, this intolerance causes diarrhoea, confusion and disorientation also.
Such is our obsession with protein and calcium that we don’t learn any lessons from the plight of people who take copious amounts of animal-based calcium and yet have terrible bones. Take Eskimos of Alaska for example. Their protein intake (25%) is the highest in the world and yet they experience up to 40% greater bone loss by the age of 40 than people elsewhere. Their calcium intake—2,000 mg per day— is also exceptionally high because of their tradition to eat the bones of the fish they catch. Even this concentrated calcium intake is not enough to prevent osteoporosis and negative mineral imbalance (more calcium loss from the bones than is taken into the body).
Milk and protein intake in the US and Finland at 90-100 grams per day is the highest in the world and yet they have the greatest number of hip fractures. On the other hand, Hong Kong and black townships of South Africa consume the least amount of milk and fewer than 80 grams of protein per day and still have lowest number of hip fractures.
Interestingly, native women of Bantu tribe in South Africa have nine children on average and nurse each child an average of two years. Since they spend eighteen years lactating, their need for calcium is supposed to be phenomenally high. However, they eat only 350 milligrams of calcium a day on average, that comes mostly from vegetables, fruit, whole grains and about 10% protein. Yet, they have no calcium deficiency at all. Their bones are strong. Osteoporosis is unheard of. They don’t lose teeth even in old age and their children too grow up healthy and without rickets and other calcium deficiencies so very common in other cultures. The secret? The calcium that they get from vegetarian-based protein diet is absorbed properly.
Please note that you cannot take care of your calcium through tablets. Get them from nature’s tablets called vegetables. During the first few weeks on this diet, levels of calcium, iron, zinc, etc, might go down slightly but don’t let that worry you. The levels will stabilise soon enough.
If at all you take calcium supplements, make sure that you take an equal amount of magnesium. Only then can it be absorbed properly.
Give a Reply