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What diet to follow to have strong bones
Is drinking milk enough to have strong bones?
Last week, we had to be school dietitians, so we had to develop a special diet because we wanted children to have strong bones.
As milk is high in calcium, one of us proposed to give each child 1 liter of milk for breakfast every morning. According to this type of diet, children would take enough calcium and they should not have to worry about until the next meal. Furthermore, in a liter of milk there are 1,200 mg of calcium, the daily amount needed.
Following the proposed diet, our monitored children should have had elephant bones… However, something is not going on very well with this diet: The children who are drinking a liter of milk (Few of them can bear it in their stomachs), feel heavy and tired at school, they are not performing well and they are in a bad mood.
Furthermore, we have noted that children who are only ingesting milk for breakfast are not working properly at school. So they are until mid-morning, when, after eating a sandwich, they look full of energy.
What more do need for bone health besides milk?
Having strong bones is the best way to prevent bone fractures
So, since milk alone is not enough, we must investigate further.
Reading about the bones, we have seen that, in order for them to be strong, they do not only need calcium. They need energy, too, especially cereals (rice, pasta…); vitamins of green vegetables; oily fish because of vitamin D, and many minerals present in nuts or legumes (peas, chickpeas, beans,…)
Therefore, we have tried to make a diet with all these foods. We consider having milk with peas is not a good combination for breakfast, so we split the important foods along the day, including breakfast, so that the students bodies gets all the nutrients and energy required gradually and steadily.
Now our school children are eating happily, because every day they eat food with different colors and new flavors. The are more concentrated in class. They get better grades and they are stronger and are more cheerful.
This is because they eat all the healthy foods, their bones are growing stronger and their body and mind is grateful.
* Related information: Diet for knee and joint recovery
What is the conclusion of the proposed experiment?
We could summarize it in the following statement:
| To grow and build strong bones it is important a varied diet rich in all natural foods that provide us with energy and nutrients, cooked the way we like each day and in varying combinations. |
More information about nutrition.
