Food for strong bones

A healthy balanced diet will help you build strong bones from an early age and maintain them throughout your life.

You need sufficient calcium to strengthen your bones and vitamin D to help your body absorb calcium.

Poor bone health can cause conditions such as rickets and osteoporosis and increase the risk of breaking a bone from a fall later in life.

You should be able to get all the nutrients you need for healthy bones by eating a healthy balanced diet.

A good diet is only one of the building blocks for healthy bones, which also includes physical activity and avoiding certain risk factors.

General population

Adults need 700mg of calcium a day. You should be able to get all the calcium you need by eating a varied and balanced diet.

Good sources of calcium include:

• milk, cheese and other dairy foods
• green leafy vegetables, such as broccoli, cabbage and okra, but not spinach
• soya beans
• tofu
• soya drinks with added calcium
• nuts
• bread and anything made with fortified flour
• fish where you eat the bones, such as sardines and pilchards

Although spinach might appear to contain a lot of calcium, it also contains oxalic acid, which reduces calcium absorption, and it is therefore not a good source of calcium.

It's difficult to get all the vitamin D we need from our diet and we get most of our vitamin D from the action of the sun on our skin.

Short daily periods of sun exposure without sunscreen from late March/April to the end of September are enough for most people to make enough vitamin D.

However, everyone is advised to consider taking a daily vitamin D supplement.

Good sources of vitamin D:

• oily fish, such as salmon, sardines and mackerel
• eggs
• fortified fat spreads
• fortified breakfast cereals
• some powdered milks

If you've been diagnosed with osteoporosis, your doctor may prescribe calcium and vitamin D supplements as well as osteoporosis drug treatments if they have concerns that your calcium intake may be low.