By Penelope A. Domogo, MD
I don’t hear it often now but in the past I often hear an adult saying “ We need calcium, di ba? So we need to drink milk.” Let us see.
Cows have such big bones and muscles. Their bones are so strong that even if they jump over the fence of our garden to steal the camote leaves, they don’t fracture a leg. Just imagine their heavy weight pushing on their relatively slim legs as they land on the um-a. Someone with brittle bones would buckle & fracture. But no, their bones are strong and sturdy and won’t fracture and they would run away as fast as they could. Why are their bones so strong and not brittle? Meaning these cows are not osteoporotic! They don’t drink their milk everyday, except when they are babies, di ba? We don’t give them our human milk either. Think about that. Where, oh where, do these big strong bones come from?
We have been taught since we were young that strong bones are built primarily by calcium and vitamin D. Ok, we know where cows get vitamin D. No, they don’t get it from supplements. Yes, they get enough vitamin D from their daily exposure to the sun. Now, where do you think they get their calcium? They only eat grass and when the grass is gone, they feed on your camote leaves and even sayote plants and young rice seedlings (rice is also grass). How about the elephant whose ivory tusks are even tougher than bone? Where do elephants get their calcium? Tusks are made mostly of calcium. And where does the agudong or ket-an or kuhol gets calcium for its shell?
Well, where else? Yes, Virginia, they get calcium from the grass and the camote leaves and sayote leaves and yes, the “pana”. For your information, the Philippine Food Composition Tables 1997 show that for every 100 grams of boiled camote leaves, you get 57 milligrams calcium and if you eat these camote leaves raw, you get much more- 137 mg of calcium! Sayote (or chayote) leaves have a little less calcium – 51 mg. if boiled and 81 mg. if raw. You see, dear readers, we destroy some vitamins and minerals with cooking. Rice has calcium also! Unpolished rice (brown rice) has 38 mg calcium and well-milled rice (white rice) has less at 27 mg. You see, dear readers, polishing the rice removes its minerals and vitamins.
What about the grass? We don’t eat grass so its composition is not in these tables but google says 10 kilos of fresh grass contains more than 8000 mg of calcium! Well, all plants – green leafy veggies, bukel, green beans, etc. – actually contain calcium.
What about the calcium content of cow’s milk? Plain fresh cow’s milk contains 139 mg, almost same as raw camote leaves! But, remember, this is what sustained the cow when still a baby. Those milk products now sold in the grocery are fortified with calcium thus their high calcium content. The bad news is that more calcium doesn’t necessarily mean better. Why is that? Too much calcium in the bones actually makes the bones more brittle- something we are not taught. A 12- year study by D. Feskanich, et al. in 1997 that followed up 77,000 women showed that women who drink 2 or more glasses of milk are almost 50% at higher risk of fracture than those who don’t drink milk. And don’t forget our local data. Although we don’t have written records, people of my generation and those older will testify that hip fractures in the past were rare. And yet, Igorots in the past didn’t drink milk because God did not give us dairy cows. If they did drink milk, it was rarely,. BTW, “osteoporosis” is the medical term for brittle bones which means easily broken. Brittle eh.
The point here is that we don’t need to drink milk to get calcium. We get enough calcium from all the variety of plants provided by our Creator in the right amount and proportion that only our Creator knows. Let’s just trust Him. If you insist on drinking milk, chocolate and other dairy products on a regular basis, it is because you like it, not because you need the calcium.***
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“I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love.” Ephesians 3:17
