Dietary Reference Intakes

The Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) are the umbrella term that encompasses
the array of standards—RDAs, Estimated Average Requirements, Adequate
Intakes, and the Tolerable Upper Intake Levels—for nutrient recommendations in
planning and assessing diets for healthy persons.
Recommendations encompass not only daily intakes intended for health
maintenance but also upper intake levels that reduce the likelihood of harm from
nutrient intake excess.
The DRI value includes recommendations that apply to gender and life stages of
growth and development based on age and, when appropriate, pregnancy and
lactation.
The following definitions apply to the four different sets of values for the intake of
nutrients and food components in the DRIs:
1. Estimated Average Requirement (EAR): Average level of daily nutrient intake to
meet the requirement of one-half of the healthy individuals in a particular life stage
and gender group
2. Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA): The average daily nutrient intake level
sufficient to meet the requirement of about 97% of healthy individuals in a
particular life-stage and gender group
3. Adequate Intake (AI): The AI provides an assumed adequate nutritional goal
when no RDA exists.
4. Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL): The highest average daily nutrient intake
level likely to pose no risk of adverse health effects to almost all individuals in the
specified gender and life-stage group of the general population.
This table presents Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) in bold type and
Adequate Intakes (AIs) in ordinary type followed by an asterisk (*). RDAs and AIs
may both be used as goals for individual intake. RDAs are set to meet the needs
of almost all (97 to 98%) individuals in a group. For healthy breastfed infants, the
AI is the mean intake. The AI for other life stage and gender groups is believed to
cover needs of all individuals in the group, but lack of data or uncertainty in the
data prevent being able to specify with confidence the percentage of individuals
covered by this intake.