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How do I get enough calcium on a plant-based diet?

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Recorded

This event was on February 25, 2025

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to course-specific questions, to how to turn your cooking passion into profit or simply hearing the perspective of a professional chef, Chef Dan is ready to answer them all.

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Question

Annie Moriarty

How do I get enough calcium on a plant-based diet?

Answer

So you can get, uh, a lot of calcium from a lot of different sources. Um, leafy greens are a wonderful way to be able to get calcium. Like, uh, you know, mustard or collard greens can make up almost 20%, 20% of your calcium intake depending on, you know, who you are. But typically you can get about 20% of your calcium from something like that, and that's from a cook down cup of that. So, um, that's a lot of calcium in those. Um, a lot of places will, or a lot of things will, um, supplement calcium into foods as well too. Uh, tofu one of those areas that you can get a calcium, you know, thing as well too. But, uh, a lot of people I know will actually take a vegan calcium supplement as well. I do that for my kids just to make sure that they're getting enough of it as well. I'll get a vegan, um, calcium supplement just to liquid base basically to be able to make that. Um, so they're getting enough calcium just as growing kids. Um, I'm always making sure they're getting enough fat and enough protein and then calcium is one of those other things I'm always looking for for them too.

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

*Dan Marek* is a chef educator who has been teaching vegan and vegetarian cooking for over 15 years. At Rouxbe, he is our Director of Plant-Based Culinary and Development where he helps develop content, classes and builds courses for many of our partners. Dan is a board member of Slow Food Austin, the Institute of Child Nutrition, and Conscious Capitalism. He has earned his BA in Journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and holds certificates in Nutrition from Cornell University. Prior to his role with Rouxbe, Dan worked with Whole Kids Foundation training teachers and food service at schools across the country on nutrition and culinary best practices. He also worked as a Healthy Eating Educator at Whole Foods Market’s flagship store in Austin, TX, was a personal chef for some of Austin’s elite business people, taught classes in culinary techniques at Austin Community College, The Natural Epicurean, and Le Cordon Bleu. Dan also regularly volunteers cooking or speaking about nutrition for the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Marathon Kids, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, and the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Austin and Central Texas.