Does a LOW Intake of CALCIUM Retard GROWTH or Conduce to STUNTEDNESS?

Abstract

It is widely accepted that in humans a low intake of calcium prejudices the rate of attainment of height and makes for ultimate stuntedness. There are, however, so many factors, dietary and non-dietary, which influence growth, that a precise assessment of the particular role of calcium is well nigh impossible. Children from poor homes, and probably with a relatively low calcium intake, are certainly inferior in height compared with better class children of the same race and country. In addition, usually, though not invariably, indigenous children from tropical and semitropical countries, habituated to a low intake of calcium, are inferior in height compared with Western children. In neither case, however, is there evidence that differences in calcium intake are specifically implicated. Where calcium supplements have been fed for short periods to children and youths accustomed to intakes of calcium less than the recommended allowances, there appears to be no critical evidence that these additions have specifically produced increments in height beyond such observed in controls. The conclusion is reached that it has not been established that calcium intake per se is of importance in regulating height. It is suggested that apart from gross undernutrition, the critical intake of calcium below which retardation of growth occurs, lies below the wide range of calcium contents of everyday diets consumed in different parts of the world.