Calcium Intake (Coursework Sample)

In the Physical Development module, I have posted a New York Times Personal Health article about osteoporosis, and how different athletic activities impact the likelihood of osteoporosis and bone problems. For this extra credit, I want you to read the article and evaluate your lifestyle as it applies to risk of osteoporosis. Specifically:
Part 1: Diet. As you will read in the article, a diet rich in calcium is essential for good bone health. Do you eat a bone-healthy diet? For this part of the extra credit, list everything you eat in one typical 24-hour period, then look up the calcium content for each food. The article provides a link to an online calculator of calcium content in a variety of foods. There are many other online calculators as well, and between them you should be able to find most of the foods you eat (hint – if you can’t find a food listed anywhere, it probably doesn’t have much calcium in it). To find other online calculators, simply type “calcium content in foods” in Google, and you’ll see several of them, including one for vegan diets. You might also find calcium content on the Nutrition Facts label of processed foods, although this will be listed in % of Daily Values, requiring you to do a little bit of arithmetic. List each food you consume, how much, and how much calcium (in milligrams) you got from each food. For example, your list might start with:
2 slices whole wheat toast - 60 mg.
1 tablespoon butter - 17 mg (this took a lot of digging to find, which I thought was strange because butter is a dairy product)
1 tablespoon grape jelly - 15 mg (also took some digging, then I remembered to just look on the jar)
vente Starbucks nonfat latte - 40 mg. (I am assuming 1 oz of skim milk in my latte)
As you can see, you’ll need to do some detective work, and some estimating, but give it your best shot. Add up all the calcium you consumed that day, and discuss how you are doing toward the recommended calcium intake for your gender and age. If you are well below where you should be, what can you realistically do to improve your calcium intake, and hence your bone health? Don’t worry about showing me that you eat a lousy diet – I’ve seen it all, including someone who ate nothing but Cheetos and Red Bull for a 24 hour period. But try to select a typical day for you – you’ll learn more about your bone health if you take this assignment seriously.
Part 2: Exercise. For the same typical day that you analyzed your diet, also analyze your physical activities. There are no calculations similar to what you do for calcium intake, but list your activity and discuss it in terms of amount of time spent in each activity; amount of time doing impact activity, in which your bones are resisting gravity with pressure and hence producing bone; the extent to which your activity is continuous versus starting and stopping (as you will read in the article), and any other aspects of your physical activity that are relevant to the building of strong bones.
When you are finished listing and discussing the two sections (diet and physical activity), submit your written report through the submit button. This extra credit will be worth 1.5 points on your total points for the course. That might not seem like much, but last semester there were more than 20 students who moved up a letter grade by adding the 1.5 points of extra credit, and 7 students who would have moved up a letter grade if they had completed the extra credit. Never miss out on a point, because you don’t know until the end of the semester if you’re going to need it or not.