Calcium is essential to a healthy diet and it helps prevent osteoporosis in later life. But most of us don’t get the calcium we need.
• Beginning at age 9, children should get 1,300 milligrams of calcium per day in their diet. Serve your child low-fat milk and foods high in calcium such as yogurt, cheese and other dairy products, cereal with calcium, orange juice with calcium, and dark-green leafy vegetables. An 8-ounce glass of low-fat milk has 300 milligrams of calcium.
• Most adults up to age 50 need 1,000 milligrams a day of calcium. Pregnant women and people over 50 need more than that.
Half of all children under age 5, 35 percent of teenage boys, and about 85 percent of teenage girls do not consume the daily calcium recommended by experts.
