Since 1998, the Institute of Medicine has issued eight exhaustive volumes of DRIs that offer quantitative estimates of nutrient intakes to be used for planning and assessing diets applicable to healthy individuals in the United States and Canada.

All eight volumes are summarized in this reference volume, Dietary Reference Intakes: The Essential Reference for Dietary Planning and Assessment.

Organized by nutrient for ready use, this reference volume reviews the function of each nutrient in the human body, food sources, usual dietary intakes, and effects of deficiencies and excessive intakes. For each nutrient of food component, information includes:

• Estimated average requirement and its standard deviation by age and gender.
• Recommended dietary allowance, based on the estimated average requirement and deviation.
• Adequate intake level, where a recommended dietary allowance cannot be based on an estimated average requirement.
• Tolerable upper intake levels above which risk of toxicity would increase. Along with dietary reference values for the intakes of nutrients by Americans and Canadians, this book presents recommendations for health maintenance and the reduction of chronic disease risk.

Also included is a Summary Table of Dietary Reference Intakes, an updated practical summary of the recommendations. In addition, Dietary Reference Intakes: The Essential Reference for Dietary Planning and Assessment provides:

• Guiding principles for nutrition labeling and fortification
• Applications in dietary planning
• The proposed definition of dietary fiber
• A risk assessment model for establishing upper intake levels for nutrients
• The proposed definition and plan for review of dietary antioxidants and related compounds