Day 6: The thing about Calcium

In light of yesterdays post where I linked up to 100 days of real food where she talked about protein. I thought I would do some investigation on calcium for you today.
The CDC recommends that you drink fat-free or skim milk. I have 2 problems with this particular recommendation. 1. skim milk and fat free milks are more highly processed...to take out the fat...than whole milk. 2. when you are eating an entirely whole foods diet, you are naturally eating less fat, so drinking whole milk and getting a little extra fat (in moderation of course) shouldn't be a big deal.

According to the CDC children 4-8 (the age of a majority of my children) need 800mg per day. That seems like alot, but when you look at all the many sources of calcium in all the different food you can eat, it really doesn't take long to hit that number

Not counting the foods and drinks that add calcium to them (like orange juice and tofu) we can look at the food that contain calcium naturally.

Yogurt, of course, is a dairy product. 1 cup of yogurt has 452 mg in it. that is more than half of what a young child needs in a day.
1/2 a cup of chedder cheese has 204mg
raw broccoli has 180 mg and cooked has 94mg (just cooking it a little to eat takes away HALF it's nutritional value, isn't that something. Now I know why processed foods need to be what they call "enriched")
1/2  C cooked Spinach has 139mg. They don't tell me what raw spinach has in it, but we eat that in salad almost everyday.
1 ounce of almonds has 75mg.
Their are a lot more than this, I just named a few that we might eat on a typical day for the sake of this blog.

If we add all that up (and I am adding the cooked broccoli not the raw, since most of my kids eat broccoli cooked rather than raw and the cooked spinach since I do not have a raw spinach figure) we get 964mg/day. That figure is with not one drop of whole or skim milk. So it's safe to say that if you are giving your children a wide variety of foods and staying away from processed, they will get the calcium they need every day. Giving them a cup of milk will add several 100 mg per day

I also heard from my doctor yesterday with my labs. My tsh levels (which is my thyroid function) is up from 2.48 to now 3.9. 4.0 is the threshold they are get concerned about, so I am .1 away from that number now. My stored iron (feratin, I think)is low, so they want me to be taking a slow release iron pill daily. I have never been good at daily pills, just the honest truth. I am going to do my best, but what I am going to do better at is adding more dietary iron to my diet. I made a urology appointment today, so I will find out more about my kidney and urinary tract issues hopefully.

Today I made banana pancakes for breakfast. They turned out good I thought. The kids did not like them as much as the "other" (highly processed and full of sugar) pancakes. surprise. surprise. but they did eat it, and some even had seconds.so it couldn't have been that bad. I also gave them each a 1/2 a cup of yogurt.(to be sure they were getting at least half the calcium they needed right from the start)

whole wheat banana pancakes

I keep meaning to say that I am still drinking coffee, but alot less. I put almond milk and agave nectar in it each morning. I only drink about a half a cup these days.

While the kids were doing some school I was able to get some homemade whole-wheat bread in the bread machine for lunch today. It is one of those, not feeling so motivated days for me today. I need to shape up, this new lifestyle doesn't fair well with slackers!

loaf of bread machine wheat bread

Daniel is having a rough morning, I believe I can see a tooth in that little mouth of his trying to cut through, It is making school challenging today, and making it hard for me to think of food to eat.for the next couple days,

On another note (I just keep coming to the computer and updating as I feel I need to), I have been off of Dr. Pepper, and all soda for that matter, for 2 weeks now. I am getting to the point now where I hardly think about it. Yay for me!

sliced wheat bread

The bread wasn't quite ready, so we will save it for tomorrow. but it sure did look yummy.

 Lunch was new and exciting. The kids looked at me like they thought I was crazy for serving it. It was vegetable stir fry over brown rice with homemade teriyaki sauce. with apple and orange slices on the side. It took a little while for the kids to get around to eating it. But Addison said "hmmm, this isn't that bad." The vegetables were broccoli, cauliflower, snow peas, carrots, mushrooms and spinach. I think it was quite good myself.

I had a snack of corn chips and organic salsa a little later in the afternoon.

For dinner I broiled wild caught salmon that my dad brought us from one of this Alaska trips. Roasted red and white potatoes, grilled yellow squash and salad. It was a DELICIOUS meal and everyone gobbled it up!

dinner. yum.