Natural Healing: Eat More Calcium Rich Foods
By Susan Kelch
May/June 2002
Eat your fruits and vegetables”: These days, good health relies on this mantra, which also extends to ensuring bone health and preventing osteoporosis later in life. In China, where women consume half as much calcium as American women, rates of osteoporosis are uncommonly low. They also eat less animal protein than their Western counterparts.
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American women with diets high in animal protein had three times the rate of bone loss and nearly four times the rate of hip fractures as women with diets higher in vegetable protein, according to a study from the Bone Density Clinic at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center at Mount Zion. Deborah Sellmeyer, director of the clinic, analyzed data of osteoporotic fractures from more than 100 women, aged sixty-five to eighty.
When consumed, all proteins release acids, which must be buffered by the body and excreted by the kidneys, she says. With age, even healthy individuals lose some of their ability to excrete these acids. Bones, containing bases and minerals, step in to pick up the slack and, in the process, calcium is lost in urine. Protein-rich animal foods are highly acidic; vegetables may contain acids but also have bases to neutralize those acids.
A similar study from the Harvard School of Public Health found that a high consumption of animal protein was associated with an increased risk of forearm fracture, but no association was found for vegetable protein. Sellmeyer suggests not eliminating high-protein foods, keys to a healthy diet but, rather, finding more balance in your diet by eating protein with a higher intake of fruits and vegetables, which are acid buffers.
Bone expert Robert Heaney of the Osteoporosis Research Center at Creighton School of Medicine, stresses the importance of protein to ensure bone health. “Although it’s true that all protein increases the loss of calcium through the kidneys,” he says, “with adequate calcium intake you can offset calcium loss and build bone with protein.”