DIETARY
REFERENCE STANDARDS
The Food and Nutrition Board
of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has been developing reference stan-dards for
vitamins and other nutrients called Dietary.
Reference Intakes (DRIs). In
the past, the recommended dietary allowances (RDAs), which are the levels of
in-take of essential nutrients that are considered to be ade-quate to meet the
known nutritional needs of practically all healthy persons, were the primary
reference value for vitamins and other nutrients. The DRIs also include other
reference values, such as the estimated average re-quirement (EAR) and the
adequate intake (AI). The RDA, EAR, and AI reference standards define
nutri-tional intake adequacy. Since these recommendations are given for healthy
populations in general and not for indi-viduals, special problems, such as
premature birth, inher-ited metabolic disorders, infections, chronic disease,
and use of medications, are not covered by the requirements. Separate RDAs have
been developed for pregnant and lactating women. Vitamin supplementation may be
re-quired by patients with special conditions and for those who do not consume
an appropriate diet.
A varied diet containing a
wide range of foodstuffs provides adequate intake of vitamins for most people,
and supplementing these amounts will have no benefi-cial effect and may result
in the toxicity associated with hypervitaminosis. The DRI also includes the
tolerable upper intake level (UL) of vitamins. The UL is defined as the highest
level of intake of a nutrient that will not pose a risk of adverse health
effects to most individuals in the general population. The UL is an important
ref-erence standard, especially with the current promotion and wide
availability of vitamin preparations.
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