What foods should children eat to grow taller? Effective ways for children to grow taller

Many parents try their best to supplement their children with calcium. In addition to drinking more milk, they even add calcium powder to their children when they are babies and let them take calcium tablets when they grow up. They do this in the hope that their children can grow taller and grow as tall as a tree! But will children grow taller if calcium is supplemented? Supplementing calcium at the wrong time will have no effect.

If children have enough calcium, will their bones be strong enough? Will they not have osteoporosis when they are old? The National Resource Center for Osteoporosis and Related Bone Diseases of the National Institutes of Health released "Children's Bone Health: A Practical Guide for Parents" in 2015. Dr. Bao shares the following key points to remind parents that in order for children's bones to grow well, in addition to taking in enough calcium, the key is to keep them healthy!

Children's golden period should not be ignored

Generally, a full-term baby is only 40 to 60 cm tall at birth, but can grow to 150 to 200 cm tall when it grows up. This shows that bones are constantly growing, old bones are constantly being removed and replaced by new bones. During childhood and adolescence, the size, length and density of bones continue to increase.

For most people, bone density reaches its peak between the ages of 25 and 30, with girls reaching 90% of their peak bone mass at the age of 18 and boys at the age of 20. Therefore, parents should help their children to store bone mass during their teenage years before they reach their peak bone density. Establishing a "bone bank" account for your child is like saving for your child's education. The more you save in childhood, the longer the savings will be available to your child when he or she grows up.

Nutritional intake details

Proper nutrition intake is very important, just like building a house, which requires steel and cement as the frame. If the building materials are not enough, the house cannot be built and will not be strong. Therefore, the right amount of food rich in calcium and vitamin D is the only way to supplement children's bone structure, and both are indispensable. Foods rich in calcium include milk, milk powder, dried fish, dried shrimp, cheese, dried tofu, black sesame, bitter melon, amaranth, kale and other green vegetables.

As for vitamin D, there are two ways for children to obtain it. One is to eat vitamin D from food, and the other is to synthesize vitamin D through the skin after exposure to sunlight. Vitamin D obtained by both methods can be activated into vitamin D3 after being metabolized by the liver and kidneys in the body, and then further promote calcium absorption. Foods rich in vitamin D, including cod liver oil, animal liver, egg yolk, etc., are the main sources.