Dietary Reference Intakes

Widely regarded as the classic reference work for the nutrition, dietetic, and allied health professions since its introduction in 1943, Recommended Dietary Allowances has been the accepted source in nutrient allowances for healthy people. Responding to the expansion of scientific knowledge about the roles of nutrients in human health, the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, in partnership with Health Canada, has updated what used to be known as Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) and renamed their new approach to these guidelines Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs).

Since 1998, the Institute of Medicine has issued eight exhaustive volumes of DRIs that offer quantitative estimates of nutrient intakes to be used for planning and assessing diets applicable to healthy individuals in the United States and Canada. Now, for the first time, all eight volumes are summarized in one easy-to-use reference volume, Dietary Reference Intakes: The Essential Reference for Dietary Planning and Assessment. Organized by nutrient for ready use, this popular reference volume reviews the function of each nutrient in the human body, food sources, usual dietary intakes, and effects of deficiencies and excessive intakes. For each nutrient of food component, information includes:

• Estimated average requirement and its standard deviation by age and gender.
• Recommended dietary allowance, based on the estimated average requirement and deviation.
• Adequate intake level, where a recommended dietary allowance cannot be based on an estimated average requirement.
• Tolerable upper intake levels above which risk of toxicity would increase.
• Along with dietary reference values for the intakes of nutrients by Americans and Canadians, this book presents recommendations for health maintenance and the reduction of chronic disease risk.

Also included is a "Summary Table of Dietary Reference Intakes," an updated practical summary of the recommendations. In addition, Dietary Reference Intakes: The Essential Reference for Dietary Planning and Assessment provides information about:

• Guiding principles for nutrition labeling and fortification
• Applications in dietary planning
• Proposed definition of dietary fiber
• A risk assessment model for establishing upper intake levels for nutrients
• Proposed definition and plan for review of dietary antioxidants and related compounds

Dietitians, community nutritionists, nutrition educators, nutritionists working in government agencies, and nutrition students at the postsecondary level, as well as other health professionals, will find Dietary Reference Intakes: The Essential Reference for Dietary Planning and Assessment an invaluable resource.