Micah Stanley
Calcium is found in many foods, not just milk and milk products. You will find a list of calcium-rich foods and a sample nutrition plan for a day with a vegan diet that provides you with sufficient calcium.
Foods with calcium: the list
The daily requirement for calcium, including the safety margin, is 1000 mg per adult – whether young, old, pregnant, or breastfeeding. Only teenagers are recommended 1200 mg per day.
In our list, you will find the most important calcium-rich foods from the plant kingdom. If you regularly incorporate these into your diet, you will be well supplied with calcium even with a purely vegan diet.
In the list below, we have given the calcium content per portion and not per 100 g. If nothing else is mentioned, it is the calcium content of raw and fresh food.
The calcium content given is, of course, an approximate value for rough orientation, since the nutrient content of natural foods always fluctuates.
In addition to the green powders already mentioned in the list above, dandelion leaf powder, broccoli powder, broccoli sprout powder, parsley leaf powder, etc. are also available. They can easily be mixed into shakes or smoothies or even into juices and salad dressings, and in this way provide a small extra portion of calcium in a very unobtrusive way.
Example of a vegan diet plan with calcium-rich foods
The foods suggested above can now be integrated into a menu as in the example below. Of course, you can also eat other foods if you wish. If you are looking for calcium-rich healthy recipes, then feel free to visit our recipes section or our YouTube cooking channel, where our vegan chef Ben will introduce you to delicious recipes.
Recommendation for breakfast
Muesli (made of oat flakes or gluten-free flakes as desired) with dried fruit and nuts and – if desired – fresh fruit. Mixed with calcium-rich spring water or almond milk.
Of course, if you choose another plant-based milk (soy milk, oat milk, or rice milk) that is fortified with calcium, the calcium content of the muesli will increase even further.
As a snack
Green fruit smoothie, 1 tbsp almond butter and 100 g green leafy vegetables (e.g. lamb’s lettuce, pak choi, lettuce, or similar) and 20 g parsley – add grass powder, microalgae powder, nettle leaf powder or moringa powder if desired. If you consume 10 g of moringa powder throughout the day alone, you will receive a 200 mg portion of calcium, which corresponds to one-fifth of the daily requirement. In the case of nettle leaf powder, 5 g is sufficient for this amount of calcium.
Your lunch could look like this
- Salad made from 50 g lettuce and either 20 g rocket or 50 g cress
- Vegetables from 200 g of the above vegetables
- 2 tbsp chopped nuts
- Quinoa made from 50g of dry quinoa per person
- Tofu 50g
A dessert
Drinking chocolate made from almond milk (mix almond milk with cocoa powder (unsweetened!))
As another snack
A small piece of basic cake made from nuts, almonds, poppy seeds, dried fruit, a portion of trail mix, or sesame milk.
The latter is prepared as follows: Mix 10 g sesame with 250 mg water and 4 to 5 dates (or to taste) in a blender for 2 – 3 minutes. If the milk is too thick for you, you can simply add more water and more dates or another sweetener.
The dinner
2 slices of amaranth bread with hummus and steamed nettles
Increase bioavailability and absorption of calcium
Even if you didn’t eat the stinging nettles, you would get well over 1000 mg of calcium with the above diet plan. In our article, which explains how you can meet your calcium requirements without milk, you can read about what you can also look out for in order to increase the bioavailability of the calcium contained in calcium-rich foods or to increase absorption.
Combine calcium-rich foods with calcium-rich supplements
If on some days you are not sure whether you have eaten enough calcium-rich foods, you can also use a holistic calcium-rich dietary supplement, e.g. B. the Sango sea coral.
A daily dose of Sango sea coral provides you with approx. 550 mg of calcium and at the same time magnesium in the right ratio (approx. 240 mg).
As mentioned above, even with plant-based drinks you can choose those that are enriched with organic calcium. In this case, the calcium comes from calcium-rich algae and is therefore highly bioavailable. However, due to a new regulation, these drinks may no longer contain algae powder if they are organic drinks.
Since conventional-quality plant-based drinks often contain unnecessary additives (thickeners, flavorings, sugar, etc.), we advise you to fortify organic drinks with calcium yourself or to take the calcium independently of these drinks.
The calcium-rich alga (Lithothamnium calcareum) in particular is now available as a dietary supplement – in capsules or as a powder.
Other holistic and calcium-containing food supplements are the grass powders, microalgae, or green plant powders mentioned above, such as nettle leaf powder or moringa powder.
