THEODORE DALRYMPLE: WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF I CONSUME TOO MUCH CALCIUM? “It is tempting for people to suppose that if a little of something is good for them, then a lot of it must be better. Unfortunately this is not always or even usually the case. . . . What the Swedish researchers found was that the graph of the relationship between calcium intake and death rates was a U-shaped curve. People with a low consumption of calcium had a higher mortality than those with a moderate consumption, but so did people with a high consumption.”