If your intestine lacks an enzyme that enables you to digest lactose, a milk sugar, getting your daily calcium from dairy products isn’t an option. Lactose intolerance causes illness after you eat foods made with milk, a major and widely available calcium source. Even if you aren’t lactose intolerant, deriving your dietary calcium from a variety of foods helps broaden your overall nutritional profile. Include different calcium-rich foods without lactose in your menus for their bone, teeth and additional health benefits.
Sardines Canned With Edible Bones
One 3-oz. serving of sardines, which are typically canned in oil along with their edible bones, provides about one-third of the average 1,000 milligrams of calcium per day recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The calcium mineral concentration in the fish bones contribute to this high daily value, or DV, without any lactose content. A serving of sardines also offers more than 25 percent DV of vitamin D, a nutrient needed for calcium absorption in the body.
Pink Salmon Canned With Bones
Some varieties of salmon are also processed with their calcium-rich bones. While 3 oz. of canned pink salmon with bones has 18 percent DV of calcium, the vitamin D content equals more than the full day’s requirement of 400 international units. Even fortified milk products, with their lactose drawbacks, supply only 25 percent DV of vitamin D.
Black-Eyed Peas
Among legumes, which are calcium-rich vegetables without any lactose, black-eyed peas, also called "cowpeas," offer high mineral content. Besides their 21 percent DV of calcium per 1 cooked cup, black-eyed peas also impart significant potassium, magnesium and iron to your diet. To reduce the amount of sodium, a mineral that can raise your blood pressure, choose fresh, unsalted frozen or low-sodium canned black-eyed peas.
Enriched Beverages
Many people who can’t digest lactose substitute lactose-free soymilk or rice beverage for cow’s milk. These plant-based calcium sources are fortified to match milk’s 30 percent DV of calcium and 25 percent DV of vitamin D in 1 cup. Some brands of frozen orange juice concentrate and prepared orange juice have comparable enrichment of calcium and/or vitamin D per ½-cup serving.
Cooked Spinach
The calcium content of leafy green vegetables, such as spinach, becomes denser as the volume of leaves shrinks during cooking. One cooked cup of spinach delivers 24 percent DV of calcium, as well as potassium, magnesium and iron. Collard greens, turnip greens and bok choy provide similar nutritional benefits and, like spinach, do so minus any lactose.
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