RDA And Nutrition

Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) basically have been established as recommended nutrient levels for healthy populations. Special additional requirements may be needed for problems such as premature birth, inherited metabolic disorders, infections, chronic diseases, digestive problems (especially malabsorption syndromes), and the use of medications, both prescription and nonprescription.

In addition, environmental pollutants, anti-metabolites, excessive stress, and excessive dietary constituents, such as certain fats, proteins, carbohydrates, food additives, and naturally occurring food toxins, can also increase the requirements for many nutrients.

RDAs assume that nutrient requirements in normal healthy people are distributed according to the mathematical Gaussian (so-called "normal") distribution. Alternative distributions may more accurately represent the reality due to biochemical individuality and to some of the previously mentioned factors.

RDAs assume that standard deviations for nutrient requirements are generally about 15 percent of the mean (thus 2 standard deviations higher than the mean would cover about 97 percent of the healthy population). This 15 percent standard deviation is based largely on an assumed biological measurement and of a finding for nitrogen losses in male college students deprived of protein.

The study below was done with animal and human requirements of a number of selected amino acids, calcium, and vitamin B- I (thiamin). From examining just this small sampling, we can plainly see that there is a tremendous variation in the requirements for these nutrients.

If we were to examine all of the current existing essential nutrients, it stands to reason that we would also find a tremendous variation in the requirement for many of these nutrients as well. The average range in the following study was about a 4-fold variation. This is twice what the Food and Nutrition Board has assumed based on protein requirements.

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