Nutrition & Bone Health: How to build & maintain healthy bones on a plant-based diet

If you haven't already read (or at least skimmed the abstracts) listed in the the previous post, you may want to do so to get the full story -- i.e., bones are made of more than calcium and vitamin D.

Vegan Guidelines (developed by vegan dietitians):

Calcium in the Vegan Diet

FAQs About Vitamin D

Vegan Foods are Good for Bone Health

Meeting Calcium Needs:Tips for Vegans

Bones, Vitamin D, and Calcium

Vegetarian Guidelines (include dairy sources):

Building Bones That Last - Even though more than 5 years old, I've included this resource by Vesanto Melina and Brenda Davis because it contains a table of the calcium content of many different plant foods as well as the percentage of calcium absorbed from each source.

Bone Health for Women - An "all-in-one" web site with pages on Food, Exercise, Supplements, and Tips & Recipes.

Food Sources of Calcium and Vitamin D - A helpful reference that includes an easy-to-read table of nutrient values for common and not-so-common (e.g., daylily flower, sea cucumber) plant sources of calcium.  Not strictly a vegetarian resource, though, as it includes fish.

Note: The D*action consortium recommends higher Vitamin D supplementation levels than stated in these resources.

Other Greens & Berries posts in this series:

• Nutrition in Bone Fracture Prevention & Healing: Part 1
• Nutrition in Bone Fracture Prevention & Healing: Part 2
• Nutrition in Bone Fracture Prevention & Healing: Part 3
• Nutrition in Bone Health: Selective Literature Review
  

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Image credits: top - Kale Almond Pesto by elana's pantry; bottom - Parsley, cottage cheese & yogurt dip (recipe here)

I've included it here, however, as it has an extensive range of Asian sources plant sources, including

Recent additions to the Nutrition Practice Resources page

You may not visit this page regularly so I thought I'd mention a few recent additions in case they're pertinent to your practice and/or interests:

• Canadian Diabetes Association 2008 Clinical Practice Guidelines
  

• Healthy Eating at School
  

• Obesity & the Impact of Marketing on Children -- Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance of Canada (CDPAC)'s position statement
  

Michael Pollan's critique on "nutritionism"

You already may  know that Michael Pollan has published a new book.  Perhaps you've also read Marion Nestle's praise for his "manifesto."   But the next link  may be new to you so I'm going to mention Planet Green has a post on In Defense of Food , which includes 11 guidelines for eating the "Pollan Way."

Almost one year ago, on the previous version of my blog, I wrote about this Michael Pollan's article.  At that time I didn't know he was writing a new book.  Here's my post from February 2007:

Recently, I came across an extremely concise food guide presented as a brief directive with two qualifying phrases: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." This is how Michael Pollan begins his New York Times Magazine's essay on what to eat for good health. In the remainder of this article, he elaborates on how the ideology of "nutritionism" has created a "conspiracy of confusion" about what we should we eat to be healthy and suggests nine unscientific (his own word) rules of thumb. Pollan counters the reductionist-scientific perspective with guidelines grounded in culture, tradition and food-sense. I'm tempted to share many excerpts from this intelligent and compelling article, but will restrain myself and recommend you go read it. OK, I have to share this great one-liner: "Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health."
Link to Unhappy Meals by Michael Pollan

The deal on saturated fat -- according to Marion Nestle

I need to find a way a saving all of Marion Nestle's wise advice on interpreting complex and contradictory nutrition research, but until then, I will have to use my blog as a repository. (I know some of my readers also read Marion's blog so please excuse the double-posting.)

Today especially I want to make a note of her response to a question that basically is asking "What if saturated fat isn't so bad?"  Here is part of Marion's answer:

(1) All fats–no exceptions–are mixtures of saturated, unsaturated, and polyunsaturated fatty acids (2) Saturated fats occur in greater proportions in animal fats–meat and dairy foods, (3) Some epidemiologic evidence–but not all–suggests that people who eat a lot of meat and dairy foods have a higher risk of heart disease than people who eat a lot of fruit and vegetables (this is correlation, not causation), (4) The same clinical studies that show how trans fats do bad things to blood cholesterol levels also show that saturated fat does too, although not as much (But: people take in a lot more saturated fat than trans fat), and (5) Saturated fat is a single nutrient and the studies reviewed and discussed by the journalists take saturated fat out of its dietary context.

Out-of-context studies of single nutrients are exceedingly difficult to interpret. At the moment, today’s dietary (not single nutrient) advice is the same as it has been for the last fifty years. As I put it in What to Eat, “Eat less, move more, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, and don’t eat too much junk food.” Michael Pollan gives exactly the same advice: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Do this, and you really don’t need to give a thought to single nutrients.

 Links: What's the Deal on Saturated Fat?, What to Eat (home page)