Calcium in the Vegan Diet: The Vegan Calci-culator

Vegan and so you don’t eat dairy? Is this cause for calcium hysteria?

Absolutely not.

Eating a variety of plant foods that are a rich source of calcium is a perfectly acceptable way to meet your needs!

You’ve probably seen lists of vegetable calcium sources before. While these lists are helpful, it can sometimes still be difficult to know what combination of foods will allow you to meet your calcium needs on any given day.

That’s where the Vegan Calci-Culator comes in!

I’ve developed the Vegan Calci-culator to make it really easy for you to ensure you are getting a decent amount of calcium per day. While calcium recommendations differ, I have selected the common target of 800mg of calcium per day. If you and your treating health professional estimate that you need more, this can of course be done by adding more of the foods listed – but the easiest way would be to add another cup of fortified soy, rice or almond beverage. Please, talk to your health professional about your best target – in Australia, for example, the recommendation for Australian adults 18-50 is 1000mg/day.

How to Use the Vegan Calci-Culator to reach around 800mg/day of calcium:

The goal is to get to 25 POINTS/DAY through using any combination of the GOLD, SILVER or BRONZE foods PLUS 1 cup of your calcium-fortifed beverage*.

*A “calcium-fortified beverage” is soy milk, rice milk or almond milk with added calcium (typically 300mg per cup)

EXAMPLE DAILY OPTIONS

OR, JUST ADD UP YOUR POINTS!

Now all you need is the list of vegan calcium-rich foods, conveniently categorised into GOLD, SILVER and BRONZE.

That’s way too big for this blog post!

To get the list, as well as a 3-day meal plan to give you a feel for how to meet your calcium needs as a vegan, e-mail us with your name and “Vegan Calci-Culator”.

(Please make sure you give us your name so we know you’re a human…we don’t like spam anymore than you do!)