• Overview
  • Dietary Advice for General Health
  • Diet Evaluation Standards
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  • Organizations and Agencies in Nutrition
• Disease States
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  • HIV+
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  • Lifecycle

Standards of Evaluation of Diet

The first six topics identify US government recommendations, regulations and policies concerning nutrition standards, nutritional labeling of foods and government regulations of supplements. The last topic provides quick access to current knowledge about the dietary and nutrient intake of the US population using discriminators of age, gender and ethnic background.

1. Dietary Reference Intake (DRIs), Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs), Adequate Intakes (AI), and Tolerable Upper Intake Levels (UL)

   See:

   1. Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) and Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA)
      US Department of Agriculture (USDA) - Food and Nutrition Information Center

   2. Most Frequently Asked Questions About RDAs and DRIs
      Nutrition Information Research Center

   These tables list the current recommended intake of individual micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) and macronutrients by age, gender and pregnancy status. Safe upper intake levels of micronutrients are also included. The data are not all equal regarding scientific support for the recommendations, and RDAs are more firmly based in supporting data than Estimated Average Requirements (EAR). These recommendations are based on comparison to known deficiency diseases and may not reflect ideal intake levels but they do include a large "safety margin" to account for individual variation in needs within each population category. The Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences determines the recommendations and they are generally re-evaluated every ten years or as needed. They have predominately been utilized to evaluate the nutrient needs of groups or populations and to determine goals for delivery of an adequate food supply to persons in hospitals, schools, and the military.
   
   Utilization of these standards for evaluation of the intake of a specific person requires a person to record detailed information regarding their food intake for one to seven days or more (24-hour recall or food record), to be analyzed by software programs. These programs contain the macronutrient and micronutrient content of thousands of our common foods in order to obtain the average nutrient content of a personís diet as represented by their recall or food record. Alternatively, a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) can be used which contains a limited list of commonly consumed foods, usually 60-120 items, which is used to estimate average nutrient content of their diet. Nutrient content of the diet is dependent on their frequency of consumption and usual portion size of the listed food items. It is a quicker method of ascertaining food intake and is less expensive to analyze. It is usually used in large epidemiological studies.

2. US Dietary Guidelines
   See: Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005
   US Department of Agriculture (USDA)/ Department of Health and Human Services
   These guidelines were developed to provide consumer friendly information to improve diet and exercise behaviors for better health. They are published every five years and are more qualitative than the DRIs.

3. Food Guide Pyramid
   See:

   1. MyPyramid US Department of Agriculture (USDA)

   2. Ethnic/Cultural Food Guide Pyramids
      US Department of Agriculture (USDA) - Food and Nutrition Information Center

   This pictorial guideline was developed to appear on many food products to serve as an educational tool to guide consumers in better food choices with a balance from different food groups with recommendations for the number of servings suggested for each food group.

4. Food Labeling
   See: Food Labeling and Nutrition: An Overview
   US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)/ Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFAN)
   Consumer and health groups pressured the government to require the food industry to label their food products with information that would aid consumers in identifying the nutritional content of specific food products. Considerable compromise was necessary to agree on the specific listings that are now part of the food label and how they are expressed.

5. Health Claims of Food
   See: Health Claims and Nutrient Content Claims
   US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)/ Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFAN)
   In order to protect the public from unsubstantiated health claims for specific foods, the US government developed standards that must be met before a specific health benefit can be claimed or advertised on food and dietary supplement labels.

6. Regulations of Vitamin/Mineral Supplements
   See: Dietary Supplements: Industry Information and Regulations
   US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)/ Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFAN)
   The widespread proliferation of pills to supplement the nutritional content of one's intake of food resulted in the identification of DRIs, UL, etc. to serve as standards of comparison and to set criteria for formulations. The CFAN has created answers to commonly asked questions about the regulation of dietary supplements.

7. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III (NHANES III) Report on Dietary Intake and Nutritional Status of the US Population
   See: NHANES III Report on Dietary Intake and Nutritional Status of the U.S. Population
   Each decade since 1970, the US government has carried out large epidemiological studies on dietary intake and health parameters, using careful sampling methods to represent our general population's dietary and nutritional intake, and the presence of health risks. Evaluation of this data is valuable to track possible problems in the total population or specific groups within the population, assess changes with time that may be beneficial or detrimental and to measure the effect of specific programs to improve the dietary intake of our population. Evaluation can also help identify possible health problems that can be expected in our population due to poor eating habits.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Are the DRIs an accurate assessment of our "optimal" requirements to keep us from developing long-latency nutritional diseases like CVD, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and osteoporosis?
2. Few studies have been conducted on the elderly and their nutritional needs which appear to increase with age. Do the elderly have higher requirements?
3. Can I meet all my needs by taking a vitamin/mineral supplement? Why or why not?
4. Since 25-33% of our population have dietary intakes below the DRIs, should we supplement our foods? (Intake of less than 75% of the DRIs isconsidered to indicate an increased risk of inadequate intake, when one takes into account the safety factor in the DRI value.)
5. What do the Dietary Guidelines mean when they say "choose a diet low in saturated fat"? What is low? How do we know?
6. Does the Food Pyramid really help people make better food choices? All foods within each category are graded the same and there is no upper limit to the sugars and fats category in the peak. What is a serving of sugars or fats?
7. What disease risks do the data from the NHANES III dietary intake data suggest for our population?