Eat These 9 Foods for Strong Bones

We spend a lot of time focused on our muscles and body fat — but because our bones are hidden, we don’t consider them as much. But bone health is directly connected to our quality of life, especially as we age. One way to shore it up is with good nutrition — including enjoying specific foods for strong bones, and minimizing some other ones that aren’t doing our body structure any favors.

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Why is bone health important?

About 10 million Americans have osteoporosis, and 44 million more are at risk of developing it, because they have low bone density, according to the Bone Health & Osteoporosis Foundation. One in two women will break a bone in their lifetime because of osteoporosis — that’s more of a risk than heart attack, stroke, and breast cancer, combined.

“Osteoporosis is when a person’s bones become weak and brittle because new bone is not being made fast enough to keep up with the body’s removal of old bone. This could be due to several factors like your age, race, family history, and lifestyle choices,” says Partha Nandi, MD. Symptoms of early bone loss are hard to detect, but once a person has osteoporosis, symptoms include frequent bone fractures, poor posture, a decrease in height, back pain, and fragile stature.

Over-exercise, smoking, eating disorders, certain medications (such as thyroid medication, steroids, and anti-seizure drugs), and deficiency in calcium, phosphorus, and vitamin D also can cause osteoporosis.

But before you just grab some milk or cheese, “Even if you’re getting enough calcium, if you’re not absorbing it, and also excreting too much, your bones will be at risk,” warns registered dietician Keri Glassman, CDN.

What are foods for strong bones?

Eating an anti-inflammatory diet is one step toward improving bone health. A study from The Ohio State University found that women who ate anti-inflammatory diets had less bone density loss when compared to women who ate inflammatory diets (high in sugar, fried and processed foods, and trans fats).

Add these anti-inflammatory foods to your plate:

• Leafy greens
• Beans and pulses such as white beans, lentils, and chickpeas
• Baby bok choy
• Broccoli
• Oily fish, such as salmon, mackerel, sardines, and albacore tuna
• Dairy, including yogurt and cottage cheese
• Olive oil
• Spices such as turmeric and ginger
• Alliums, such as garlic and onions

Related: Get a free bone health-boosting recipe guide!

What to avoid for bone health

Since bone density loss is tough to gauge until it’s a real problem, here are some foods to cut back on (or eliminate) to help keep your skeleton happy.

• Caffeine: Back away from the triple espresso. “Drinking more than three cups of tea or coffee can get in the way of calcium absorption, as caffeine disrupts it,” says Maggie Moon, MS, RDN.
• Salt: “Eating overly salty food stimulates calcium excretion through the kidneys, which can take away from your bone density over time,” Dr. Nandi says. Adds registered dietician-nutritionist Lauren Harris-Pincus, “Try to monitor processed and canned foods with added salt as well at the amount of salt you use in cooking.”
• Phytates: “Commonly found in whole grains and beans, phytates can interfere with the body’s ability to absorb calcium,” says Harris-Pincus. You can reduce the phytate level by soaking grains and beans in water for several hours, then rinsing and cooking them in fresh water. (Soaking for 7+ hours, such as overnight, is optimal.) Beans that are highest in phytates include navy, kidney, and soy.
• Oxalates: “Spinach is a powerhouse healthy food, but it contains oxalates, a compound that binds with calcium, making it difficult for the body to absorb,” says registered dietician Pam Nisevich Bede. Top a spinach salad with cheese to help counteract calcium lost from the spinach, she advises. Other oxalate-containing foods include rhubarb, certain beans such as navy, kidney, and soy, and even chocolate, says Harris-Pincus.
• Soda: Drinking a lot of soda has been linked to a reduction in bone mineral density and a heightened risk for bone fracture, warns Bede. Glassman adds that the phosphoric acid content in soda increases calcium excretion in urine.
• Processed Meats: Hot dogs, cured beef, breakfast sausage, and salty deli meats can trigger bone density loss due to the meat’s nitrites. Nitrites can remove calcium from bones by depleting glutathione content. These meats are also super salty, which is bad for bones in general, says Moon.
• Alcohol: “Drinking in excess can interfere with the calcium balance in your body by inhibiting the enzyme that turns vitamin D into the active usable form of vitamin D, which is needed by the body for calcium absorption,” says Glassman.