Why Calcium Is a Children's Health Priority

What's a simple way to improve your children's nutrition? Add milk and other calcium-rich foods to their diet.

Nutrition experts say that maintaining a diet with adequate calcium will allow a child to achieve maximum bone density. This will lead to better health throughout life.

An important mineral

Calcium is one of the most important minerals in the body, making up 1.5 to 2 percent of total adult body weight. Besides providing the skeletal structure for bones and teeth, calcium plays a key role in many other day-to-day functions of the body. Calcium is important for the normal clotting of the blood, the conduction of nerve impulses, the contraction and relaxation of muscles (including the heart muscle), as well as the regulation of body fluids, hormone secretion and cell division.

In fact, calcium is so important that your body has a feedback system to maintain calcium at a constant level. (Your body has a similar system for sodium and potassium, as well.) Whenever the blood and bodily functions need more calcium, it is pulled from your bones, where it is stored.

Your body can't make its own calcium, so the only way to get enough is to eat calcium-rich foods. And if you don't get enough calcium in your diet, you can end up with weakened bones, increasing the risk for fractures later in life.

Bone development

Calcium is essential for a strong skeleton. Ninety-nine percent of the body's calcium lies in the bones. Although you might think of bones as inert objects, they are not. Bones are living tissues that are constantly being remodeled. Throughout your life, calcium is reabsorbed, the protein-bone matrix is remodeled and the calcium is re-deposited. At any given time, 10 to 15 percent of the bone surfaces of your body are undergoing remodeling.

Calcium is also vital during childhood, when bones are actively growing. During childhood, the amount of calcium deposited in the bones increases as the bones lengthen. At this critical stage of development, the body not only needs a great deal of calcium, but it also absorbs the calcium more effectively that at any other time of life. For this reason, child health experts recommend that young children "bank" extra calcium for bone health. 

For calcium to be effective in bone growth and development, it is also important that your child get enough vitamin D. This can be done through careful sun exposure, eating vitamin D-rich foods such as fortified milk and milk products, cod liver oil and some fatty fish, or taking a vitamin supplement.

Many bone mineral specialists now say that children and teens should consume five servings of calcium-rich foods each day -- up from the recommended three. By getting enough calcium in early life, these experts believe that children might reduce the risk of accidental bone fractures.

Too little calcium

At the same time that research is providing new proof about the link between calcium and the development of optimal bone growth in children, government surveys paint a disturbing picture. According to a recent survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, roughly half of all American children are not getting 100 percent of the Recommended Dietary Allowance (also called the Dietary Reference Intake, or DRI) for calcium.

These are other results of the survey:

• Only 50.3 percent of children ages 5 years and younger are getting 100 percent of the RDA for calcium.

• Among children ages 6 to 11 years, 57.8 percent of boys and only 37.6 percent of girls are getting 100 percent of the RDA for calcium.

Health experts are concerned because other surveys have found that calcium is not a priority for most American parents. Many parents have a false sense of security that their children are getting enough calcium from the foods they eat. At the same time, few parents are aware that children can "bank" calcium in their bones.

How much is enough?

The National Institutes of Health offers the following recommendations for calcium intake. A one-cup (8-ounce) serving equals 300 mg of calcium.

• Infants up to 6 months old: 400 mg of calcium (1-1/3 servings a day)

• Infants from 6 months to 1 year: 600 mg of calcium (2 servings a day)

• Children ages 1 to 5 years: 800 mg of calcium (about 3 servings)

• Children ages 6 to 10 years: 800 to 1,200 mg of calcium (3 to 4 servings)

• Teens: 1,200 to 1,500 mg of calcium (4 to 5 servings)

Some of the most common sources of calcium are from dairy products, such as milk, yogurt and cheese. Other sources include calcium-fortified soy milk and juices, canned salmon (with bones) and sardines, and dark green, leafy vegetables, such as broccoli and kale.