Cost Comparison: Calcium through supplements vs foods
As a dietitian, I promote food over supplements any day. But, for you frugal folks out there, you might say, “Stacie, it’s so much cheaper to buy a calcium supplement than to eat food that contains calcium.”
Or is it?
Cost Comparison
I browsed the aisles of my local pharmacy, grocery store, and Amazon.com for common prices for supplements and foods. Your purchase prices may vary slightly depending on where you shop (and when):
Calcium supplements:
OS-Cal (1 tablet = 500 mg Ca) = $0.14
Viactiv (1 chew = 500 mg Ca) = $0.13
Citracal (2 tablets = 630 mg Ca) = $0.22
Calcium-containing foods:
2 cups of milk = ~ 600 mg Ca = $0.37 ($3.00 per gallon)
2 small containers of yogurt: ~ 600 mg Ca = $1.00 (usually on sale 2/$1)
2-3 oz can of sardines: ~650 mg Ca = $1.70
1 ounce Total cereal: 1000 mg Ca = $0.14
Analysis
Although most foods that contain calcium are more expensive, these foods contain SO MANY MORE NUTRIENTS THAN JUST CALCIUM ALONE! As an easy and inexpensive example, Total cereal contains 100% of 12 vitamins and minerals!
And for those of you who say “why not just take a multivitamin?” Well, most multivitamins do not contain 100% of your daily needs for calcium, so you’d need to get another source of it anyways. Shall we do the math again?
1 ounce Total cereal: 1000 mg Ca = $0.14
One-a-Day Women’s vitamin: (only one with > 400 mg calcium per tablet) = $0.08
However, you’d need to eat some other source of calcium to get enough for the entire day!
Overall Assessment
Price of calcium supplement: less than a quarter
Price of calcium from food: variable
Price of nutrition from calcium-containing food: priceless!
No, this is not a paid advertisement to eat your Total cereal, just to eat a variety of foods to help meet your calcium needs!
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I’ve been training for a marathon lately and those longer distance runs can really be a challenge.
My feet muscles have been cramping up lately as soon as I reach the 1 mile mark… They relax after I keep working through the pain but it would be that much better if they didn’t hurt ever!
Keep up the good work!
Um, most of the vitamins and minerals in Total cereal are from supplements, not from the grain and other food ingredients.
So the conclusion I’m drawing from your post is that Total is a frugal way to buy supplements.
I think Debbie has a point about Total being fortified. In that sense it’s almost as if you ground up a Tums, put it in applesauce and called it a calcium-containing food.
That said, I need to get myself some Total and put it in my granola mix.
I would have appreciated some more details. The cost of Total cereal varies wildly depending on the flavor, the size of the package, and where you buy it, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it as cheap as 14 cents an ounce. The average seems to be around 25.
Furthermore, why consider only expensive name-brand supplements? According to the CVS website, $10.99 will get you 400 CVS Calcium 600 + D tablets, which works out to 5.5 cents for 1200 mg of calcium – more than a day’s worth.