After 50, the guidance is four serves a day from the milk, yoghurt, cheese and alternatives group. Most Australian women over 50 do not get there, and it is not for want of trying.
Four serves is a lot of food. The requirement goes up by 300mg at 51, at roughly the point a lot of women are eating less dairy rather than more, and nothing about daily life gets easier at the same time.
Dairy is also not the only route, which matters if dairy is the sticking point for you. Here is what a serve actually looks like, dairy and otherwise.
Dairy
250ml of milk. A 200g tub of yoghurt. Two slices of hard cheese, around 40g. Half a cup of ricotta.
Cheese is the one people overestimate. Forty grams is a modest amount, not a cheese board.
Tinned fish with the bones
100g of tinned salmon with the bones in, or 60g of sardines.
Tinned salmon is wild caught, almost without exception. The red and pink varieties are Pacific salmon, and the farmed Atlantic salmon you see fresh and smoked does not generally end up in a tin.
The bones are the whole point. They are soft enough to crush between your fingers, and once they are broken through a dish you will not notice them. Picking them out removes most of the calcium.
Calcium-set tofu
Around 170g of firm tofu, provided it is set with calcium.
Check the ingredient list for calcium sulphate or calcium chloride. Tofu set with other coagulants carries far less, and the packet will not say so on the front.
Fortified plant milks
250ml, provided it carries at least 100mg of calcium per 100ml. Most of the major soy, oat and almond milks do, but not all, and unfortified organic versions generally do not.
Shake the carton. Added calcium settles, and the last glass in a carton that has sat still carries more than the first.
Four serves, in practice
Yoghurt at breakfast. A fortified milk in your coffee. Tinned salmon through lunch. Cheese or tofu at dinner. That is four without anything that looks like effort.
Or, if dairy does not suit you: fortified milk on cereal, a tofu stir fry, sardines on toast, and a fortified milk in your afternoon tea.
Where Greenher fits
Greenher Daily carries 584mg of calcium per serve, which is a little under half a day's requirement after 51, and calcium supports normal bone maintenance.
It is a contribution alongside food rather than a replacement for those four serves. If dairy is difficult for you and the alternatives above are not landing, it is a reasonable way to close part of the gap.
Every nutrient and amount is on our formula page.
The takeaway: Four serves a day after 50, and a serve is 250ml of milk, a 200g tub of yoghurt, 40g of hard cheese, 100g of tinned salmon with the bones, 170g of calcium-set tofu, or 250ml of a fortified plant milk. Check the label on tofu and plant milk, because not all of them count.
Part of Is This Just Getting Older?
This post is part of a month-long collaboration with seven other women working in midlife health, and there is a prize pack to enter. Everything you need to enter is on one page. Entries close 18 October.
The science behind this post:
- National Health and Medical Research Council (2013). Australian Dietary Guidelines. The recommendation of four serves a day for women over 50, and what counts as one serve. Read it here
- Eat For Health. Serve sizes. The serve sizes used in this post, including tinned fish with bones, calcium-set tofu and fortified plant milks with at least 100mg calcium per 100ml. Read it here
- National Health and Medical Research Council (2006). Nutrient Reference Values for Australia and New Zealand: Calcium. Where the 1,300mg a day target for women over 51 comes from. Read it here
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (2026). Usual Nutrient Intakes, 2023. The national survey showing most Australian women over 50 fall short on calcium from food. Read it here