How You Can Determine Your Own Personal Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) for Optimal Nutrition

You’re probably more familiar with Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs), which were first introduced by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences back in 1941. RDAs went through 10 revisions before being revamped by the Food and Nutrition Board in 1995 with a new, more comprehensive approach to setting dietary guidelines, the result of research indicating the importance of higher intakes of some nutrients for promoting health and performance, and preventing chronic disease. The Food and Nutrition Board replaced and expanded RDAs with Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) to provide recommended nutrient intakes under various conditions. DRIs include the following four reference values: RDA, the average daily dietary intake of a nutrient sufficient to meet the requirement of 97-98% of healthy individuals; Adequate Intake (AI), based on observed intakes of the nutrient by a group of healthy persons; Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL), intake above which increases risk of toxicity for most individuals; and Estimated Average Requirement (EAR), the amount of a nutrient estimated to meet the requirement of half of all healthy individuals in the population. 

You can learn your own personal DRIs by clicking on this link to the USDA website: http://fnic.nal.usda.gov/fnic/interactiveDRI/. Then just enter your sex, age, height, weight, and activity level and check all the boxes to have the program calculate your body mass index (BMI), daily calorie needs and daily levels of macronutrients, vitamins, and minerals based on the information you provide. Once your chart is generated, you can click on most of the nutrients to learn more about those nutrients! Pretty cool!