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This article is currently or was the subject of an Spring 2007 educational assignment.

How do they come up with the recommended daily values? What is the process scientists use to determine this value? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.81.130.109 (talk) 05:30, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Like all good scientific values and measurements... they guess! --62.56.103.230 (talk) 14:33, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Contents 1 Conflicting Info 2 Correction 3 Clarification request 4 misleading 5 Macronutrients 6 Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio 7 Zinc 8 Quantity 9 Confusing 10 To expand or add articles? 11 Merge proposal 12 Resulting daily energy intake

[edit] Conflicting Info

this article recommends saturated fatty acid intake be limited to "as few as possible" but the Healthy Diet article states that a sufficient quantity of saturated fatty acids is "necessary". they cant both be right.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.174.33.232 (talk) 05:52, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

This article is right. You technically do not need any saturated fat in your diet (your body can make all the saturated fat it needs). However this would be practically impossible to accomplish. The healthy diet article is filled with misinformation at this time.Jasonbholden (talk) 01:56, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Correction

I thiink the person who made the switch (edit) recently from 0.9 mg copper to 90 mcg copper was off by a power of 10 in their conversion. 65.78.17.194 13:05, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for paying attention. I believe there was an error in the earlier text. I double checked this against the cited table, and think it is now correct.M dorothy 04:52, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Daily intake of vitamin b12 should be 2.4 mg NOT mcg. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.40.1.129 (talk) 17:39, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification request

Please help improve this article by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page. (July 2007)

What is the difference between the Estimated Average Requirements, Reference Daily Intake, and Adequate Intake? -- Beland 20:28, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

The EAR is the amount of a given nutrient that meets the needs of half of a specific healthy population (the average person). The RDA is the EAR + 2 standard deviations. Thus it is the amount of a given nutrient that meets the needs of 97.5% of a specific healthy population. The EAR is used more often to evaluate how many people in a population are meeting their needs for a nutrient. The RDA is more often used for individual recommendations. Jasonbholden (talk) 05:20, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] misleading

The Dietary Reference Intake is a system of nutrition recommendations from the United States Department of Agriculture intended for the general public and health professionals. Applications include:

    * Food labels in the United States and Canada 

_______________________________

This maes it seem like the United States Department of Agriculure can implent govermental decisions in Canada. Someone should elaborate if anyone knows anythign abotu the subject.f

[edit] Macronutrients

There should be a note for the RDI/AI of protein (listed as 56g/day) referencing the debate among weight trainers, bodybuilders, nutritionists and medical professionals concerning the necessary daily intake of protein--as well as a reference to the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, heavily problematic in Western, particular American, diets, which is suggested in this chart to be the the typical 10:1 ratio (some sources insist on a 4:1 ratio or less).

[edit] Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio

Hasn't it already been determined that the 17:1 ratio typical to the American diet is unhealthy and that the >4:1 ratio is preferable?

[edit] Zinc

The UI for Zinc is listed as 40 mg; could it maybe be appropriate to include a footnote that for some individuals 50 mg is a sufficient UI?

[edit] Quantity

I think that 130 g carbohydrates is for a dog, but not for a human. A human should consume at least 8.8 MJ/day. Of that energy, 55 % should constitute carbohydrates (300 g), 15 % protein (80 g) and the remainder should be fat. That is what professionals say. I would say, that the fat intake could be a little bit less, if someone is inactive (8.8 MJ/day), or a little bit more, if someone is very active (e. g. bikers, having energy output up to 25 MJ). Further, if someone is recovering after some stress, e.g. cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, intensive psychical or physical strain etc., protein intake should be at least 140 g, but better 160 g. When my resting heart rate was 36/min (after 100 km on bike), my protein intake was more than 120g/day. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.113.65.9 (talk) 19:54, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

• The RDA for carbohydrate is based on the amount of carbohydrate eaten that would provide the brain sufficient glucose, without the need of glucose production from dietary protein or glycerol. That is how they come up with 130 grams (it is basically a suggested minimum). However, there is no evidence to suggest that it is bad for your body to make glucose from protein, compared to obtaining it from your diet. In other words people can live on less than 130 grams of carbohydrate a day, but most healthy diets usually have around 55-65% of their energy content from carbohydrates, which is usually 2-3 times the RDA. The RDA for protein is 0.8 grams of protein per kg of body weight. This is sufficient for 97.5% of the healthy population, but some people require more (for example someone with cancer might need around 1-1.5 g/kg body weight and someone with a full body burn might need around 2 g/kg body weight).Jasonbholden (talk) 02:39, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Confusing

What is the difference between this article and Reference Daily Intake. They both appear to be about the same thing.--DustWolf (talk) 22:45, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree. The situation with all these subtly different notions (RDA, RDI, DV, RDV, DRV), with meanings shifting in time, is already confusing, and having two articles adds to the confusion. Therefore I propose that the two be merged (see Merge proposal below). I hope that this merge can be executed by someone who knows the subject matter and can do a better job in explaining the relationship between these TLAs than the current articles. BTW, most dictionaries list Recommended Daily Allowance as the first or only meaning of RDA (for example Stedman's Medical Dictionary and The American Heritage Abbreviations Dictionary), but, although Recommended Daily Allowance redirects to Dietary Reference Intake, this name is not mentioned at all in these articles and its meaning remains unexplained.  --Lambiam 06:12, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] To expand or add articles?

I am planning on elaborating on ULs, RDAs, EARs, etc, explaining how they are developed and what they mean. However I think it may be better to create a new article on each one. To illustrate why this may be better I will use an addition to the "B vitamins" page as an example. On that article I added a table with tolerable upper intake levels for various B vitamins. If someone read that, but did not know what a tolerable upper intake level was they could click on the link and find out immediately, rather than having to fish through this article to find it.I thought I would try to get some input before I go making new articles.Jasonbholden (talk) 02:53, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid that splitting this information over several articles would add to the confusion. I'd rather see a single treatment that clearly explains these different but related concepts, and in the process also explains how they are related and compare to each other.

For linking, you can use anchors (see {{Anchor}} and {{Anchors}}). For example, the article Circus (building) has a section heading

==Architectural design{{anchor|Spina}}==.

This means that [[Circus (building)#Spina]] links to the section Architectural design of that article, which is where the meaning of spina is explained. You can make the link look pretty by using a pipe, thus: [[Circus (building)#Spina|spina]], which looks on the page like spina. And you can make a redirect page; the page Spina (Roman circus) is an example; so [[spina (Roman circus)|]] also does the job.  --Lambiam 14:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal

The proposal is to merge Reference Daily Intake to here (Dietary Reference Intake) for the reasons given above (see the section Confusing).  --Lambiam 06:22, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Oppose, that's like merging Fahrenheit and Celsius. There two different systems.IAmTheCoinMan (talk) 21:18, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

The relation between C and F is well-known and easily described. The relation between RDI and DRI is not (yet) well-described in these two articles. Boud (talk) 18:58, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment - i've just looked briefly at the two pages, but my understanding from a rapid glance is that if the two pages are complementary, then they should at least be written consistently (if the sources are consistent) in a slightly less confusing way than the way they are presently worded. My understanding as of 18:58, 23 December 2009 (UTC) is:

• DRI = the set {EAR, RDA, AI, UL} - according to Dietary Reference Intake
• DRI is not used for "nutrition labelling" - according to Dietary Reference Intake lead paragraph
• RDA, which is part of DRI, is used for RDV in USA/Canada - according to Dietary Reference Intake
• RDI is older than DRI - according to Dietary Reference Intake
• "RDA from 1968" is older than RDI - according to Reference Daily Intake
• RDI is used by FDA(USA) for DV and DRV - according to Reference Daily Intake

Questions:

• If RDA is used in USA/Canada for RDV, then that means that part of DRI is used for nutrition labelling, contradicting the lead - in Dietary Reference Intake
• Does DV=DRV=RDV ?
  • If yes, then what is used for DV=DRV=RDV? RDA or RDI?
• The "RDA from 1968 is older" part of Reference Daily Intake needs to be reworded if an updated RDA definition is still considered useful.

Independent of any merge or non-merge, this confusion needs to be cleared up - maybe a historical/geographical timeline would help?

If someone understands the (historical/epidemiological/health-administrative) relations between all these defintions clearly enough and thinks that there should be two separate articles, then please do the clean up (e.g. use my attempted understanding and questions as a guide to the problems) and then come here and say that you've cleaned up, with e.g. a one sentence summary here (there's no need to repeat the explanation in full on the talk page) so that people can check. Otherwise, the arguments in favour of a merge seem strong to me: these are all closely related concepts, that overlap sufficiently that there's no need to have separate pages unless the material in the long term becomes too in-depth.

References - who defines the DRI and the RDI? It seems like nal.usda.gov is the main reference institution in both cases. i haven't tried going to the refs to sort this out myself, sorry.

Boud (talk) 18:58, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Resulting daily energy intake

I computed what the recommendations of the Food and Nutrition Board (listed in the article) imply in terms of energy intake. Recommended daily macronutrient intake is given as 130 g carbohydrates and 56 g protein, while fat should be limited to 20–35% of calories. Using the usual conversion factor of 4 kcal/g for carbs and proteins, their contribution is 744 kcal. If this at least 65% of energy intake, the total energy intake including fat is at most 1145 kcal. This is much lower than the usual recommended daily energy intake (see Food energy#Energy usage in the human body). Am I doing something wrong?  --Lambiam 17:26, 4 August 2009 (UTC)