Calcium and iron in leafy greens?!

Question: Calcium and iron in leafy greens?

I hear over and over again that calcium and non-heme iron cancel each other out. I also hear that leafy greens are good sources of both calcium and iron. Is that contradictory? For example, my bag of salad says that a two cup serving provides 10% of the day's worth of calcium and 20% of the day's worth of iron. Does that really mean anything, or is that data taking into account the calcium-iron conflict already?

Answers:

i found a study saying that it's not true http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16009…

I don't think I've heard the non-heme iron and calcium thing. But many leafy green veggies do contain oxalate and oxalate does inhibit your body's ability to absorb calcium. So if you're depending on them for your calcium, you need to eat a lot of them.

Soy contains oxalate, too.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/261402…

Yes, eat them! They don't cancel each other out necessarily; calcium just reduces the absorption of iron - it doesn't stop the absorption. Plus, leafy greens can be a good source of vitamin K, too.

the calcium found in milk/yogurt/cheese (basically, dairy products) is the calcium that "cancels out" the iron, where as the calcium found in leafy greens doesn't do that.

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Calcium and iron in leafy greens?!

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