Applications of Dietary Reference Intakes in dietary assessment and planning

Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) are used for assessing and planning diets of individuals and groups. Assessing individual intakes is complicated by the fact that neither the individual's usual nutrient intake nor their individual requirement is known. However, the degree of confidence that intakes are adequate or excessive can be estimated. Assessing diets of groups requires information on the group's usual nutrient intake distribution, which can be obtained by statistically adjusting 1 d intake distributions to remove within-person variability. For most nutrients with an Estimated Average Requirement (EAR), the group prevalence of inadequate intakes can be approximated by the percent whose usual intakes are less than the EAR. However, the prevalence of inadequacy cannot be determined for nutrients with an Adequate Intake (AI). The goals of planning are a low risk (for individuals) or low prevalence (for groups) of inadequate or excessive nutrient intakes. For individuals, these goals are met by planning intakes that meet the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) or AI, are below the Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL), and fall within the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Ranges (AMDRs). For groups, planning involves estimating a "target" usual intake distribution with an acceptably low prevalence less than the EAR and greater than the UL, planning menus to achieve the target distribution, and assessing the results.