Thursday: new doc!

[walkitout]

I walked with M.

A. had a physical with a new doc. The new doc is fine. The new doc asked some questions about a variety of things, including what she eats and then asked about milk and calcium. We don’t worry about that much and also, A. has a cheese sandwich almost every day and American cheese is weirdly high in calcium. But I did some math and weighing when I got home, and if she has either OJ (we buy the stuff with added calcium and vitamin D) or milk along with her cheese, she’s probably getting the recommended amount of calcium for an adult woman, if not for a teenage girl. I was a little surprised to find out the amount of calcium in whole wheat or peanut butter, for example, versus butter. Even fruits and veg have calcium. I _sorta_ new this, but I mostly forgot because I hit a point years ago where I just said fuck it, I am not going to worry about calcium or magnesium ever again.

I cooked a chicken. It was yummy. I made stock with the carcass after. Also, very yummy.

Comments

[ethelmay]

Back when I worried a lot more about requirements, it seemed to me nearly impossible to meet the supposed RDAs for either calcium or iron, even if one had no dietary restrictions (I eat a lot of dairy, and in those days I ate beef, which I mostly don't now). After a while I concluded there must be something wrong with the figures, because even adding up all the bits of calcium and iron from here and there, it seemed impossible that I was regularly getting more than about half or maybe three-quarters of the RDA.

I absolutely don’t ever think about the iron

[walkitout]

Honestly, I could well have done the math completely wrong. It’s a glass of milk (probably slightly more than a serving size of milk), 3 slices of American cheese (1.5 ounces — I weighed 3 slices) and/or a small glass of fortified OJ.

The doc wasn’t trying to reach the official recommendation for teenage girls (which I think is 1300) but just 1000 (which is for women). That helped.

The _American_ cheese in particular helps — that accounts for between 400 and 500 mg all by itself. The cup of milk gets another 300. Once I realized that hit over 700 together, I basically said, LOL, why would anyone worry. But I did check the smaller amounts.

40 mg in two slices of bread
Probably about the same in the quarter of a whole grain waffle

30 mg in a small orange
15 mg in a stalk of celery, about the same for a carrot, so let’s call the celery + carrot collectively 30

Oddly, she’s probably getting at least 30 mg calcium from the dark maple syrup

I’m still getting close to 900 mg there? If she has OJ flavored water (50/50 fortified OJ mixed with water, which she often has in the evening), that puts her easily over the 1000 mg. Honestly, the whole grain blondies I make would also put her easily over 1000, as would a lot of tortilla chips, neither of which she eats every day, and some things she eats instead of those for snacks would probably not add as much calcium (potato chips, popcorn). She usually has chicken for dinner which does not contribute much calcium, but when she has a burger, I almost always put a slice of American cheese on it and that would put her over 1000 mg as well (and the bun would help, too, probably, altho it would depend in part on the bun)

I’m not recommending this to anyone. I was just a little surprised how much I now visualize slices of American cheese as calcium supplements. I already knew I was buying calcium supplements in the form of OJ. I just didn’t understand about the American cheese, which generally I think of as a very nutritionally pointless food.

ETA:

Same analysis, but for Iron comes out remarkably similar, altho in this case, not too far short of teen girl rec but well short of adult woman rec. I have to agree with you that it is difficult to imagine getting anywhere near that pre-menopausal woman rec for iron without supplementation and I will further add that since I’m now in the much lower recommendation category I kinda suspect I was a lot further into too-little-iron territory than I had realized at the time. Also, if you successfully cut grain out of your diet, a lot of other stuff is lost with it. I’m sure it’s all compensated for by all the kale and other vegetables people replace it with.

Again, not recommending this as a way of eating, and I left off a bunch of stuff that was such a small amount it didn’t seem worth noting.

Iron

.38 bacon
.12 apple juice
2 waffle
2 from sandwich bread
.6 from cheese
.15 from carrot
4 from chocolate (in various items)
Chicken 1 mg or burger 2
Banana .35
Peanut butter .5

Re: I absolutely don’t ever think about the iron

[ethelmay]

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/how-much-calcium-do-you-really-need "How much calcium per day is recommended? Like many women, you may have memorized the minimum daily calcium requirement—1,000 milligrams (mg) a day for women ages 50 and younger and 1,200 mg for women over 50—and followed it faithfully in an effort to preserve your bones. But outside the United States, the recommended calcium intake is much lower. The World Health Organization recommends 500 mg of calcium a day and the United Kingdom sets the goal at 700 mg.

... Based on those studies, in 1997 an Institute of Medicine panel raised the recommendation for calcium intake from 800 mg to 1,200 mg a day for women over 50. However, the recommendation was based on calcium balance studies that lasted just a few weeks. In fact, calcium balance should be determined over a much longer time period. Moreover, there isn’t sufficient evidence that consuming that much calcium actually prevents fractures. Nonetheless, the recommendation has been carried forward since then."