Calcium is a mineral that is mostly present in your child’s bones. Having a diet with foods that are high in calcium to meet daily requirements is necessary for the development of strong bones. It is also an important way to prevent the development of osteoporosis in adults.
Toddlers (age 1-3 years) require about 500mg of calcium each day (about 2 glasses of milk).
Preschool and younger school age children (age 4-8 years) require about 800 mg of calcium each day (about 3 glasses of milk).
Older school age children and teens (age 9-18 years) require about 1300 mg of calcium each day. This higher level of calcium is especially important once they begin puberty (about 4 glasses of milk).
Since milk has a lot of calcium in it, children who routinely drink milk each day usually easily meet their daily requirements of calcium. Children with milk allergies or who just don’t like milk are a little more of a challenge to meet these requirements, but it is still easy if you learn to read food labels.
On food labels, the calcium content is usually represented as a percentage, such as 4%, 15% or 30%, etc. What does that percentage mean? It is the percentage of the daily value of calcium that you would get by eating one serving of the particular food and it uses 1000mg as 100% daily value. So, if a food label that says that it has 30% calcium has 30% x 1000, or 300mg.
In addition to actually reading the nutrition label, you can also find foods that are good sources of calcium by looking for the following terms on the packaging:
* “High in Calcium, “Rich in Calcium” or “Excellent Source of Calcium,” are found on foods that have at least 20% daily value of calcium or 200mg (and often up to 30-35% calcium).
* “Contains Calcium,” “Provides Calcium” or “Good Source of Calcium,” are found on foods that have at least 10-19% daily value of calcium or 100-190mg.
* “Calcium Enriched”, “Calcium-Fortified” or have “More Calcium.” are found on foods that have more than 10% daily value of calcium as compared to similar foods without as much calcium. So, if you have two type of orange juice and one has 4% calcium and another has 15% daily value of calcium, then the one with more calcium can say the it is calcium enriched or fortified.
So choose food products that are high in calcium to get your child the calcium he needs. And compare food labels to choose brands or types of foods that have a higher percentage of the daily value of calcium.
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