On the Recommended Nutrient and Energy Intakes for the European Community

摘要

Guidelines for "Nutrient and Energy Intake" currently used in the European Community were published in the 1992 by the Scientific Committee on Food (SCF) of the European Commission. Experts of almost all countries of the European Community developed, on the basis of physiological requirements, a set of nutrient based recommendations that could be used across the Community. The SCF considers a single recommended daily allowance (RDA) as potentially misleading which is often inappropriately used as the lowest acceptable intake. The committee calls the nutrient intake which meets the needs of virtually all healthy people in a group the Population Reference Intake (PRI); this corresponds consequently with the traditional RDA. The PRI is derived from the Average Requirement (AR) for a group, according to the criterion chosen plus safety factors (often two standard deviations; for most nutrients a coefficient of variation of 15% of the AR is considered); the PRI is thought to cover at least 97.5% of the population. A nutrient intake below which almost all individuals will be unlikely to maintain metabolic integrity according to a specific criterion is considered the Lowest Threshold Intake (LTI). The nutrient requirements are supposed to have a normal Gaussian distribution (Figure 1).