Kids Health: How to Make Their Bones Healthy?

How to enhance the bone health of kids? The healthy habits contributing to the growth of the children are also beneficial for their bone health. The key of developing health habits for the little ones is becoming good role models as parents. It’s true that when a child sees the parents sticking to good habits he gets encouraged for doing the same. The most essential good habits that one needs to maintain lifelong for having strong bones are getting involved in daily physical activities and proper nutrition; the same stands true for the kids too.

Let us know what to eat for having healthy bones. Nutrition for strong and healthy bones includes lots of food items rich in vitamin D and calcium. Generally, the vitamin D obtained from sunlight is enough for majority of the kids; if not having foods like fortified milk and egg yolks will be enough for getting the required amount of vitamin D. However, most kids fail to get adequate amount of calcium from their daily diet; this stops them from having healthy bones. Below we have mentioned the required quantity of calcium for kids of different age groups.

• Babies from birth to 6 months of age require 210mg of calcium.
• Babies between 6 months to 1 year of age require 270 mg of calcium.
• Children between 1 and 3 years require 500 mg of calcium.
• Children between 4 and 8 years require 800 mg of calcium.
• Children and young adults between 9 and 18 years require 1300 mg of calcium.

Calcium can be obtained from a number of food items, but the most common of them all are dairy products like milk, cheese, yogurt etc. Drinking 8oz of milk offers 300mg calcium; this covers around 1/3 and ¼ of the recommended dosage of calcium for the younger children and teenagers respectively. Milk also acts as the source of other essential nutrients like vitamins and minerals. Some other common calcium rich food items include: fishes like sardines and salmon, orange, spinach, broccoli, kale etc.