RECOMMENDED DIETARY ALLOWANCES (RDA)

In 1940, the U.S federal government established the Committee of Food

and Nutrition under the National Research Council of The National Academy of
Sciences in Washington, DC. In 1941, this committee was established on a
permanent basis and renamed the Food and Nutrition Board. The role of the
committee was to advise government agencies on problem relating to food and
nutrition of the people and on nutrition problems in connection with national
defense. In 1941, the committe prepared the first Recommended Dietary
Allowances (RDAs), as shown in table 2.1, "to serve as guide for planning
adequate nutrition for civilian population of the United States." The RDAs first
appeared in print in 1941 in an article in the Journal of the American Dietetic
Association. However, it was not until 1943 that the first officially published
edition of the RDAs appeared in book form. To reflect advances in nutritional
science, the RDAs were revised approximately every 5 years until 1989, when
the 10th and the last edition of Recommended Dietary Allowances was released.
the 10th edition of the RDAs provided recommendations for energy, protein, 3
electrolytes, 13 vitamins, and 12 minerals.
In essence, the RDAs have served as recommendations for nutrient
intakes for 18 life stage and gender groups (life stage considers age and, when
appropriate, pregnancy and lactation). The RDAs have accounted for individual
differences in nutrient requirements and have included a fairly large margin of
safety (i.e., they were set at a level considerably greater than the average
requirements necessary to prevent deficiency disease). They have been defined
as "the levels of intake of essential nutrients that, on the basis of scientific
knowledge, are judge by the food and nutrition board to be adequate to meet the
known nutrient needs of practically all healthy persons. " The first edition of
Recommended Dietary Allowances was published with the objective of "providing
standarts to serve as a goal for good nutrition" and to serve as a guide for
advising "on nutrition problems in connection with national defense." However,
since their inception, the RDAs have been used for a variety of other purposes
for which they were not originally intended. These include use in labeling food,
evaluating dietary survey data, planning and procuring food supplies for groups,
planning food and nutrition information and education programs, and serving as
a nutritional benchmark in the Food Stamp Program; the Special Supplemental
Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); and the School Lunch
Program.
For more than 5 decades, the RDAs served as the premier nutrient
standard, not only for the united states but also for many other countries
throughout the developed and developing world. however, as knowledge of
human nutrition increased and as nutritional concerns changed over time,
limitations in the RDAs became apparent. For example, an underlying intent of
the RDAs was to prevent deficiency disease. In recent decades, as chronic
degenerative disease have supplanted infectious and nutrition in decreasing

chronic disease risk, conditions that the RDAs fail to adequately address. For
example, the RDAs provided no recommendations for carbohydrate, dietary
fibers, total fat, saturated fat, or cholesterol. There were no nutrient
recommendation for older persons and no recommendation s for food
components that are not traditionally defined as nutrients (e.g., phytochemicals,
aspartame, caffeine, and alcohol). In addition, the recommended nutrient intake
levels of the RDAs were generally limited to amounts obtainable through diet
alone, and there was no guidance on the safe and effective use of vitamin,
mineral, and other nutrient supplements, depite considerable public interest in
use of such supplements.
Consequently, there arose a need for a more comprehensive set of
nutritional and dietary standards that adequately addressed more contemporary
nutritional concerns. In response, the Food and Nutrition Board, working in
conjunction with scientists from the Canadian Institute of Nutrition and Health
Canada, developed a new and expanded set of nutrient intakes known as the
Dietary Reference Intakes.