I get a weekly nutrition newsletter and this week’s held some great information about calcium. We moms have it pounded into our heads we need a lot, so many of us take calcium supplements. But if we’re taking them with iron, we’re wasting our money.

If you take iron and calcium, make sure you don’t take them together. And if you’re trying to get as much calcium as you can from food (and I salute you!), check the food’s iron content. Apparently there are other compounds called oxalates that make calcium not absorbable; for instance, broccoli and spinach are both high in calcium, but spinach has a lot of these oxalates, so the calcium is not as easy for the body to absorb as from broccoli.

My son will be happy I’m not forcing as much spinach on him. Has anyone ever used St. Patrick’s Day to try and get kids to try more green foods? I wonder if that’ll work…