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Reference Daily Intake (or Recommended Daily Intake) (RDI) is the daily dietary intake level of a nutrient which was considered (at the time they were defined) to be sufficient to meet the requirements of nearly all (97–98%) healthy individuals in each life-stage and sex group. The RDI is used to determine the Daily Value which is printed on food labels in the U.S. and Canada. RDIs are based on the older Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) from 1968.[1] Newer RDA's have since been introduced in the Dietary Reference Intake system, but the RDIs are still used for nutrition labeling.
Food labeling reference tables
For people 4 years or older, eating 2,000 Calories per day:
For vitamins and minerals, the RDIs are given in the following table, along with the more recent RDAs of the Dietary Reference Intakes (maximized over sex and age groups):[2]
History
The RDA was developed during World War II by Lydia J. Roberts, Hazel K. Stiebeling and Helen S. Mitchell, all part of a committee established by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in order to investigate issues of nutrition that might "affect national defense" (Nestle, 35). The committee was renamed the Food and Nutrition Board in 1941, after which they began to deliberate on a set of recommendations of a standard daily allowance for each type of nutrient. The standards would be used for nutrition recommendations for the armed forces, for civilians, and for overseas population who might need food relief. Roberts, Stiebeling, and Mitchell surveyed all available data, created a tentative set of allowances for "energy and eight nutrients", and submitted them to experts for review (Nestle, 35). The final set of guidelines, called RDAs for Recommended Dietary Allowances, were accepted in 1941. The allowances were meant to provide superior nutrition for civilians and military personnel, so they included a "margin of safety." Because of food rationing during the war, the food guides created by government agencies to direct citizens' nutritional intake also took food availability into account.
The Food and Nutrition Board subsequently revised the RDAs every five to ten years. In the early 1950s, USDA nutritionists made a new set of guidelines that also included the number of servings of each food group in order to make it easier for people to receive their RDAs of each nutrient.
In 1997 at the suggestion of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy RDA became one part of a broader set of dietary guidelines called the Dietary Reference Intake used by both the United States and Canada.
See also
References
Nestle, Marion. "Food Politics." Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
External links
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