CHAPTER 10

The Daily Nutrition You Need

The Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) is a system of nutrition recommendations from the Institute of Medicine and is composed of:

Estimated Average Requirement (EAR), the amount expected to satisfy the needs of 50% of the people in a given age group
Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA), the daily dietary intake level of a nutrient considered sufficient to meet the requirements of 97-98% of healthy individuals in each life-stage and gender group
Adequate Intake (AI), the amount given when no RDA has been established due to insufficient scientific evidence. The AI is based on estimates of intake levels of healthy populations
Tolerable upper intake levels (UL), the highest recommended daily intake amount of nutrient that can be harmful in large doses (such as vitamin D)