BoomerGirl Diary

Dear Crabby:

I just read that women who get calcium from food have a better bone density than women who take calcium supplements. Is this true?

Cal-Gal

Dear Cal:

We’ve all heard by now that it’s important for BoomerGirls to get adequate calcium. Heck, I’ve even talked about it in this column. If we don’t want to end up shaped like a question mark, we’ve gotta keep the calcium coming, especially after menopause.

We midlife women are the stuff of researcher’s dreams, with our hot flashes, our bone loss, our rabid interest in self-care, etc, etc. So the researchers at Washington University in St. Louis (home of the sweet potato fry, and also collard greens — the greens are a good source of calcium!) checked in on whether food or supplements were better when it comes to feeding our bones.

They found that women who consumed both supplements and calcium-containing foods had the highest bone density, but in the groups that did only one or the other, the foodies beat out the supplement poppers for sure. They had higher bone density, even though they had the lowest overall intake of calcium. This is due, in my opinion, though not specifically stated by the researchers, to a concept called “synergy.”

With synergy, the whole of something is greater than the sum of its parts, so picking just one part of a veggie’s mineral lineup, like calcium, doesn’t work as well as eating the whole thing altogether. The nutrition inside food is meant to work as a team, like The Captain and Tenille, or Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. (I know, I know, it’s shocking that I mentioned those names in the same sentence. But c’mon, you know you loved "Muskrat Love!")

This is why I get a little, well, crabby, when I see supplements claiming to replace “A full day’s serving of fruits and vegetables!”

BoomerGirls, it can’t be done.

It’s been tried, with various “miracle” supplements, and the results are always the same: pulling out just one player isn’t the same as having the full experience. I offer you Exhibit A. Remember “Kate and Allie?” Remember when Allie got married, and she and Kate weren’t really living together anymore? Oh, they tried to salvage things, but it wasn’t really the same after that, and shortly thereafter, they disappeared.

OK, enough grieving over Kate and Allie. Let’s get back to business. My point is, Mother Nature loves mystery, and part of her mystery is how all her creations work together in synergy. We mere mortals can’t replicate her magic in a lab. She’s got synergy. And that’s the reason I want you to eat fresh fruits and vegetables instead of popping “multies” and chow down on whole grains instead of fiber supplements. And in the best-case scenario, eat those fruits and veggies locally and in season, when the all those little nutrients are at their peak. They’re all in there, working like a team of tiny Oompa-Loompas to create a wondrous world of flavor and nutrition, just for you. Don’t let them down.