Although they are required in small portions, minerals form an extremely important part of a nutritious diet. In this article, we shine a spotlight on iron and calcium.

Minerals as a food group

Minerals are inorganic elements present in the soil and water. These are absorbed by plants and enter our bodies when we consume these plants. Similarly, animals also obtain minerals from eating plants.

Minerals as a food are classified under micro-nutrients along with vitamins. Essentially we need a small quantity, hence they are also known as trace elements. Minerals cannot be created by the human body and nutritious food is the main source of minerals. Therefore, it’s imperative that we consume a balanced diet from which we get all the different types of minerals. Dietary supplements like multi-vitamin pills also provide minerals.

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Forget about making a run to the cosmetics shop. Your very own kitchen is full of great natural beauty products for the skin.

Your kitchen is full of alternatives to those expensive, chemical based and processed, over-the-counter cosmetics. And are more importantly a much healthier and skin-friendly formulation. So why not use them?

Here are some food swaps for your routine skin care products. The best part? You can find them all in your very own kitchen!

Natural cleansers

• Milk (lactic acid), sugar cane (glycolic acid), and grapes (tartaric acid) make wonderful facial cleansers.
• Olive oil or sesame oil can be used as make-up removers.
• Strawberries contain natural salicylic acid, which is a great cleanser for acne prone skin.

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Milk is an important source of vitamin D and calcium in children’s diets.

But drinking more than two glasses a day could deplete iron stores in their bodies, raising the risk for anemia, a new study suggests.

When researchers looked at daily milk intake as it related to iron and vitamin D levels in about 1,300 preschoolers, they found that drinking 2 cups of milk a day seemed optimal for most children, says lead researcher and pediatrician Jonathon L. Maguire, MD, of St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

Drinking 3 cups or more of milk was associated with slightly lower ferritin levels in the blood, but the levels were still within the normal range for most children. Ferritin levels indicate how much iron is stored in the body.

The more milk the children drank, the lower their ferritin levels tended to be.

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Chocolate milk tops the list when it comes to fuelling yourself after a hard session at the gym.

This is because every cup of chocolate milk contains between eight and 11 grams of protein.

A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition also found that, when taken immediately after exercise, milk-based proteins promote greater muscle protein synthesis than soy-based proteins, Fox News reported.

Finally, another reason why post-workout chocolate milk is beneficial is because cow”s milk contains about 80 percent casein protein content and 20 percent whey protein content.

This is ideal because the whey protein is fast-acting, allowing amino acids to get right into the muscle tissue, while the casein protein is digested slower, providing a steady stream of amino acids over a lengthier period of time.

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Got a health query? Ask our experts

Drinking a glass of milk daily not only smartens the brain but also supplies the vital nutrients it requires to be in a peak condition.

Besides the many known benefits of milk, from bone health to cardiovascular health, the potential to stave off mental decline would potentially benefit an aging population.

Adults who drank more milk scored significantly higher on memory and other brain function tests than those who drank little to no milk. They were five times less likely to `fail` the test, compared to non-milk drinkers, the International Dairy Journal reports.

University of Maine researchers put more than 900 men and women ages 23 to 98 through a series of tests, spatial, verbal and working memory tests and tracked their milk consumption habits.

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Looking for a low fat energy booster? This quick blend of low fat milk and fruit makes an ideal drink any time of the day.

Click here to view recipe

Donkey milk provides the same amount of energy as cow’s milk but the former causes less weight gain as it raises metabolism.

Donkey milk also shows lower levels of triglycerides, unhealthy fats that affect the heart, and less stress on the metabolic system.

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Include milk, dairy products, fish, greens like amaranth, fenugreek and drumstick leaves, and cereals like millet ragi in your daily diet for an adequate intake of calcium.

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The calcium in milk helps kill cancer cells and accumulating a supply in the system can help to ward off the disease.

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Drinking milk regularly could help you shed weight, finds a recent study. Adults who drank nearly two glasses of milk daily, which provided the highest Vitamin D levels at six months, lost more weight after two years than those who had little or no milk or milk products — nearly six kilograms weight loss, on average.

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Image: Flickr/creativecommons Amy Loves Yah