what is the best source of calcium

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Permalink Reply by Denise Thomas on February 2, 2009 at 9:45am

I feel it's a load of crap frankly....

Would be interesting to hear from people about the best raw source of calcium without cow's milk

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Permalink Reply by Suzie- Smoothie on February 2, 2009 at 10:29am

the best sources are raw Maca root in powder form..this has been proven to reverse osteomalacia in USA and Aussi..so this means that it is available to the body...and sprouted sesame seeds (reme mber to rinse of the water after soaking to get rid of the enzyme inhibitors) are power houses of calcium... & more if you make it into yummy mylk....and if you take carob beans or raw powder this is also highin calcium too
But I ve just been reading alot about calcium and it odesnt matter if you have all the calcium in the world going into your body...you need Vit D3 a fat soluble vitamin/hormone to help the uptake of calcuim ...so take vit D3 which is in fish oil capsules and also is available from the sun too..if you get enough of it..like we do in the uk!!!! (:

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Permalink Reply by purewonka on February 2, 2009 at 11:37am

Reads like a story or 'research' sponsored by the dairy industry. Dairy products are actually not a great source of calcium as the phosphorous to calcium ratio is not ideal. This is also a problem I have with eating a huge amount of bananas - not a good calcium to phosphorous ratio. Papaya is one of the fruits with the best ratio as it has about 4 1/2x more calcium than phosphorous. For a food to be considered a good source of calcium it needs to have at least 2x more calcium than phosphorous. Dairy products don't meet this criterion.

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Permalink Reply by purewonka on February 2, 2009 at 12:11pm

Bananas have about 5x more phosphorous than calcium. And even if you try to reach a better balance by eating romaine with bananas (like a lot of 811rv folks do) you still are falling short as romaine only has a bit more calcium than phosphorous. Instead of a banana and romaine blended drink, a much more calcium-rich drink would be papaya and bok choy (also called pak choi - chinese cabbage). Bok choy has about 3x more calcium than phosphorous.

While sesame seeds do have a lot of calcium, they also have a lot of phosphorous. They have about .5x more calcium than phosphorous. They are rich in calcium but that is not the complete picture. We need to consider what other nutrients are in the food souce. If I were looking for the best source of calcium in a diet I wouldn't put sesame at the top of the list, but sesame would be higher on the list than dairy.

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Permalink Reply by Marte on February 2, 2009 at 1:14pm

what about figs?

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Permalink Reply by purewonka on February 2, 2009 at 1:35pm

Figs are a good source of calcium. They have about 2x more calcium than phosphorous. Mmmmm, figs. One of my faves.

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Permalink Reply by purewonka on February 2, 2009 at 12:43pm

This is a chart showing the calcium to phosphorous ratio of various foods:

http://www.njboxers.com/calphos.htm

And in this next link scroll down to near the bottom of the page to see specific info about the calcium to phosphorous ratio. Interesting stuff.

http://www.health-science-spirit.com/calcium.html

Different sources providing the ratios tend to have numbers that don't match exactly for a particular food, but it's not tough to determine which foods are the best sources of calcium.

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Permalink Reply by John on February 2, 2009 at 12:46pm

That quote is a big load of complete and total nonsense. Sounds like those lies were written by the dairy industry lobbyists. Such claims are pathetic and not based in reality.

Let me kill those lies...

Where do you think horses, deer, gorrillas, etc. get their calcium? These huge, strong animals aren't eating at Dairy Queens out in the meadows and forests. They aren't running to the local "natural" foods stores to purchase whey protein powder, or consuming gourmet cheese. They are all vegan animals that eat leaves.

Cow milk has one use: turning a calf into a huge beast in a matter of months. The cow spends the rest of its life eating leaves and grass and water. (Unless it is a factory farm cow, then it is fed genetically modified grain; chicken shit from chicken farms; sand; sawdust from lumber mills; blood meal from hog slaughterhouses; etc. Oh, and lots of drugs from the pharmaceuitcal industry.)

I include a chapter about milk in my book, Sunfood Living. Here is part of that chapter:

"Cows treated with BST and antibiotics may live less than three years, and are likely to have lived a life of stress from intensive milk production induced by drugs while eating an unnatural diet of grain, which increases the acidity of the intestinal tract and allows for the growth of E. coli O157:H7.

IGF-1 is normally found in both humans and cows and plays a part in cell division. The rBGH-treated cows produce milk that has a higher than normal amount of IGF-1. The controversy in the use of rBGH is that it is likely that an unnatural amount of IGF-1 in the diet will promote tumors by causing cells to divide at an abnormally fast rate. Many people believe that high levels of IGF-1 may transform normal breast tissue to breast cancer and stimulates and maintains malignancy of cancer cells, including their ability to spread to distant organs in an aggressive manner.
The chemical drug company Monsanto, the producer of such chemicals as PCBs and Agent Orange with its toxic dioxin components, began marketing rBGH in February of 1994 after reportedly spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the drug. Many countries have banned the use of rBGH. But not the U.S., Mexico, or Brazil.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said they have found no unusual problems with cows that have been injected with the bovine growth hormone. The FDA has also said that they believe there are no risks involved with the ingestion of the milk from cows that have been treated with the hormone.

Oh, really?

Perhaps the FDA spends too much time listening to the financial concerns of the dairy industry. Perhaps the people who work for the FDA also are financially connected to the dairy industry, and to the company that produces the hormones. Perhaps the FDA is also looking out for how much money is made by exporting American dairy and beef. Perhaps the FDA is ignoring many scientific studies regarding growth hormones. Perhaps the FDA simply and blatantly lies to the American consumers to appease the dairy industry.

One manufacturer’s list details 21 side effects that cows may experience from rBGH treatments. Cows that have been treated with the hormone have a higher incidence of painful udder infections, and this results in pus-contaminated milk. The antibiotics used to treat these infections also end up in the milk products that are sold for human consumption.

In a letter written to the FDA, Dr. Samuel Epstein, a professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois, warned that the effects of IGF-1 could include premature growth stimulation in infants, breast enlargement in young children, and breast cancer in adult females. He says that IGF-1 survives digestion, stimulates cell growth of the intestinal wall, and may promote colon polyps and other abnormal growths. He also believes that the hormone makes its way to other areas of the body by being absorbed into the bloodstream and may then promote or stimulate abnormal cell growth, resulting in tumors.
"

And more from that chapter:

"The dairy industry often bases its claim that milk is good on the fact that dairy products have a lot of calcium. So drink lots of milk and you will get lots of calcium – and the dairy industry will make lots of money. But your blood will keep pulling calcium out of the bones to neutralize the acidic level of the blood that is put off balance by the acid forming dairy products. The more animal protein you take in, the more calcium that is excreted by your kidneys and the more likely you are to have kidney stones.

The blood uses the calcium that is stored in the bones as a bank. When you eat things that raise the acid level of the blood – such as meat, fish, and eggs – the blood pulls calcium out of the bones to balance the pH level of the blood. Most fruits and vegetables have an alkaline ash, and do not make the blood take calcium out of the bones. The calcium in fruits and vegetables is more available to the body because of the calcium/phosphorous ratio found in fruits and vegetables.

A study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that raw vegans have surprisingly robust bones. How could this be when vegans don’t do what the dairy industry wants by drinking lots of milk? Raw vegans have strong bones and they have a plentiful amount of vitamin D. The raw vegans in the study even had “markedly higher” vitamin D levels than those who follow an average diet. The raw vegans also had low levels of C-reactive protein, an inflammatory molecule linked with susceptibility to heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic degenerative diseases. They also were found to have lower levels of IGF-1, which is a growth factor associated with the risk of cancers of the prostate and breasts. Those were the finding of the study that was published in the March 25, 2006 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. The study also found that raw vegans have an average body mass index of 20.5, which is clearly in the range of a healthy BMI, which is considered to be 18.5 to 24 (BMI is a measurement of height to weight).

If a person stays a vegetarian, and stays away from milk, eggs, and cheese, they lower their chances of experiencing osteoporosis. Vegetarians have stronger bones and when their bones break they heal faster than the bones of people who eat animals and dairy products

Meat, dairy, and eggs contain cholesterol. Other than non-fat milk, all of these products also have saturated fat. Some people say that you need cholesterol in your diet. You don’t need cholesterol in your diet and this is because every cell in the human body makes the cholesterol that you need. No one ever died of a cholesterol deficiency, only of cholesterol overload — heart attacks and strokes. Gallstones are made up largely of cholesterol. Plants do not contain cholesterol. Vegetarians have lower rates of gall stone problems.

The less fiber you have in your diet, the better your chances are of getting colon cancer. Dead animals, dairy products, and eggs do not have any fiber in them — at all. Fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes have lots of fiber. All countries that consume the most dead animals, dairy products, and eggs also have the highest rates of colon cancer.

Dairy is not a good source of iron. You would have to drink 50 gallons of cow milk to get the iron available in a single bowl of spinach. You need vitamin C to be able to use iron. Fruits and vegetables contain vitamin C. Vegetables such as broccoli, peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, spinach, and some others are good sources of iron.

Like human milk that is specific to the needs of human babies, cow milk is specific to the needs of baby cows.

Got Sunfood cuisine?
"

Read "The Food Revolution."

See http://www.notmilk.com

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