Most talk about calcium meals goes straight to the plate. The glass next to it gets less attention, and that is a mistake, because the drink you pour with breakfast or dinner can change a meal's calcium by about 300mg. This article compares common mealtime drinks using USDA FoodData Central figures, then shows how a day of ordinary meals changes when only the drinks change. Every food value here except the Mazafati label figure comes from an SR Legacy record last updated in 2019.
What the target is
According to the NHS, adults aged 19 to 64 and over need 700mg of calcium a day, and you should be able to get all the calcium you need from your daily diet. Its list of sources includes milk, cheese and other dairy foods, soya drinks with added calcium, curly kale and okra, bread and anything made with fortified flour, and fish where you eat the bones, such as sardines and pilchards. Two of those five are things you can drink.
Calcium in one cup of each drink
FDC gives a cup or 8 fl oz serving weight for each drink, so these figures are for one cup.
| Drink | Calcium per 100g | Calcium per cup |
|---|---|---|
| Orange juice, chilled, with added calcium | 140mg | about 349mg |
| Skimmed milk (fat free) | 129mg | about 316mg |
| Low-fat milk, 1% | 125mg | about 305mg |
| Soymilk with added calcium | 123mg | about 299mg |
| Rice milk, unsweetened | 118mg | about 283mg |
| Whole milk | 113mg | about 276mg |
| Soymilk, unfortified | 25mg | about 61mg |
| Orange juice, raw | 11mg | about 27mg |
| Tap water | 3mg | about 7mg |
| Coffee, brewed | 2mg | about 5mg |
| Black tea, brewed | 0mg | 0mg |
Two pairs in that table tell the story. Soymilk with added calcium gives about 299mg a cup and unfortified soymilk about 61mg, so the words "added calcium" on the carton make the difference. Orange juice with added calcium gives about 349mg, while plain orange juice gives about 27mg. Milk sits in a tight band whatever the fat level, from about 276mg for whole milk to about 316mg for skimmed. Tea and coffee add next to nothing.
A note on juice
The calcium orange juice tops the table, but the NHS asks you to limit fruit juice, vegetable juice and smoothies to a combined total of 150ml a day, and to keep them to mealtimes to reduce the risk of tooth decay. A 150ml glass of the calcium-added juice works out at about 220mg, which is still a useful share of the day. Drinking a full cup of it every meal would break that limit, so it can't be the plan.
The same three meals, two ways
Take a plain day. Breakfast is two slices of white bread and one Medjool date, with a cup of black tea. Lunch is a cup of cooked white rice with eight raw okra pods, and a glass of tap water. Dinner is the same again, with a cup of coffee to finish.
The bread gives about 84mg, the date about 15mg, each cup of rice about 6mg and each portion of okra about 78mg. The drinks add about 12mg between them. The whole day comes to roughly 278mg, well short of 700mg.
Now change only the glasses. Breakfast gets a cup of 1% milk instead of tea, about 305mg. Lunch gets a 150ml glass of orange juice with added calcium instead of water, about 220mg. Dinner gets a cup of soymilk with added calcium instead of coffee, about 299mg. The food is the same, and the day now reaches roughly 1,090mg. That is past the 700mg and under the 1,500mg a day the NHS calls a high dose, which it says could lead to stomach pain and diarrhoea.
Where dates come in
A pitted Medjool date weighs about 24g in the FDC data and carries about 15mg of calcium. A Deglet Noor, the golden, semi-dry date from Tunisia and Algeria, weighs about 7.1g and carries under 3mg. The only Mazafati entry in FDC is a branded label record from Sadaf, which lists 64mg per 100g, the same figure as SR Legacy Medjool. None of these will move the day's total much. The NHS counts a 30g portion of dried fruit, dates included, as 1 of your 5 A Day if it is eaten at mealtimes rather than as a snack between meals. So the date goes beside the glass, and the glass does the calcium work.
The link to Kurma medjool Malaysia, an outside site, was already in this post and is kept. Kurma Mazafati Bam offers retail and wholesale prices with delivery across Malaysia, according to its about us page. That page points to WhatsApp for quotes, and the number is on the contact page, and more articles are on the blog.
The figures here are general nutrition information, not personal advice. A GP or dietitian can help with an individual diet.