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Dietary bioactives are food substances that promote health but are not essential to prevent typical deficiency conditions. Examples include lutein and zeaxanthin, omega-3 fatty acids, and flavonoids. When quality evidence is available, quantified intake recommendations linking dietary bioactives with specific health benefits will enable health professionals to provide evidence-based information to consumers. Without evidence-based recommendations, consumers use information from available sources that often lack standards and rigor. This article describes a framework to develop guidance based on quality evidence fully vetted for efficacy and safety by qualified experts, and designed to communicate the amounts of specific dietary bioactive compounds with identified health benefits. The 4-step Framework described here can be adapted by credible health organizations to work within their guideline development process. Standards of practice used in clinical guidelines are adapted to quantify dietary bioactive intake recommendations from foods consumed by the general public, by taking into account that side effects and trade-offs are often needed for medical treatments but are not acceptable for dietary bioactives. In quantifying dietary bioactive recommendations, this Framework establishes 4 decision-making steps: 1) characterize the bioactive, determine amounts in specific food sources, and quantify intakes; 2) evaluate safety; 3) quantify the causal relation between the specific bioactive and accepted markers of health or normal function via systematic evidence reviews; and 4) translate the evidence into a quantified bioactive intake statement. This Framework provides a working model that can be updated as new approaches are advanced.

When Bacteria Get Good: Progress, Purity, and the Making of Probiotics

Throughout her career, Doris Howes Calloway sought to understand what influences human protein and energy requirements and metabolism in controlled and field settings. Much of her research became the basis for national and international dietary recommendations, many of which are in use today. She served on many committees of the US Food and Nutrition Board/National Research Council/Institute of Medicine and the Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization of the United Nations. Concerned about populations where marginal malnutrition is often overlooked, Dr Calloway led a major United States Agency for International Development–funded multiuniversity research project in low-income countries to better understand the effects of moderate malnutrition on growth and health. She led this extensive multinational study while serving as provost, the first woman in the senior administration at the University of California, Berkeley campus. Toward the end of her professional career, she was appointed chair of the 1995 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Advisory Committee. Her interest in food and nutrition policy helped reorient dietary guidance both in the United States and internationally. Dr Calloway's scientific and humanitarian accomplishments were extended further through the subsequent research and leadership activities of her colleagues, graduate students, and others whom she mentored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During her career of over 40 years, Dr Doris Calloway held a variety of leadership/administrative positions while conducting groundbreaking research in human nutrition. In those positions, she illustrated the characteristics of dynamic, successful leaders. She led change in the nutritional sciences program at the University of California, Berkeley; she valued and prioritize personal development while prioritizing the development of others; and she practiced and encouraged strategic thinking, innovation, and action while being honest and ethical. Plus, she communicated effectively across cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review examines issues related to the development of a recommended daily allowance or adequate intake, two of the categories of dietary reference intakes, for the long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (omega-3 PUFAs), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA, 20:5 n-3), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, 22:6 n-3). Although some have suggested a dietary intake of two servings of fatty fish per week or supplement intake of 500 mg/day EPA plus DHA, based on evidence from epidemiologic and clinical studies of cardiovascular benefit from regular fish or fish-oil consumption, supplementation with EPA and/or DHA may also have antidepressant and mood-stabilizing effects. Omega-3 PUFA biology is complex and chronic disease outcomes are sometimes difficult to prove, yet the possibility of benefit for a substantial portion of the population from increased omega-3 PUFA intake is a public health issue that must be addressed responsibly and be based on significant scientific evidence.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is currently reviewing regulations on nutrition labeling to better address current health issues as well as updating nutrient daily values (DVs), most of which are still based on recommended dietary allowances (RDAs) established in 1968. In 2003 the Committee on Use of Dietary Reference Intakes in Nutrition Labeling of the Institute of Medicine recommended that the DVs be based on the estimated average requirement (EAR) rather than the RDA and that a population-weighted mean of EARs be used. The rationale given is that the EAR is the best statistical approximation of the nutrient requirement for any one individual in the population, and its use would result in a food appearing more nutritious, as it would provide a greater percentage of the DV if the DV were a smaller amount. Concerns about these recommendations focus on the appropriate role of the Nutrition Facts panel, 1 of the 3 major public nutrition education tools in the United States (along with MyPyramid and Dietary Guidelines for Americans). Providing a benchmark or standard that knowingly has only a 50% chance of meeting a consuming individual's requirement is not appropriate. The DV on a Nutrition Facts panel should provide useful guidance to the individual about how a serving will assist in meeting that person's goal for consumption, and thus it should be based on the RDA or adequate intake, rather than the EAR, and be derived from the highest recommended intake, as has been the practice since 1973.

The Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, The National Academies, recently released the fifth in a series of reports presenting dietary reference values for the intake of [...]

Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) represent the new approach adopted by the Food and Nutrition Board to providing quantitative estimates of nutrient intakes for use in a variety of settings, replacing and expanding on the past 50 years of periodic updates and revisions of the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs). The DRI activity is a comprehensive effort undertaken to include current concepts about the role of nutrients and food components in long-term health, going beyond deficiency diseases. The DRIs consist of 4 reference intakes: the RDA, which is to be used as a goal for the individual; the Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL), which is given to assist in advising individuals what levels of intake may result in adverse effects if habitually exceeded; the Estimated Average Requirement (EAR), the intake level at which the data indicate that the needs for 50% of those consuming it will not be met; and the Adequate Intake (AI), a level judged by the experts developing the reference intakes to meet the needs of all individuals in a group, but which is based on much less data and substantially more judgment than that used in establishing an EAR and subsequently the RDA. When an RDA cannot be set, an AI is given. Both are to be used as goals for an individual. Two reports have been issued providing DRIs for nutrients and food components reviewed to date: these include calcium and its related nutrients: phosphorus, magnesium, vitamin D, and fluoride; and most recently, folate, the B vitamins, and choline. The approaches used to determine the DRIs, the reference values themselves, and the plans for future nutrients and food components are discussed., The Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, recently released the second in a series of reports presenting dietary reference values for the intake [...]

The National Academy of Sciences and its Food and Nutrition Board have expanded the plan used to determine dietary allowances. They wanted to include possible relationships in the definition of adequacy to chronic diseases or conditions difficult to blame on high or low consumption of one nutrient, yet linked to diet. The first set of dietary recommended intakes was to be completed by late 1997 with input from Canadian scientists.

Dietary allowances for macronutrients are based on estimating requirements and on determining variation in requirements in population groups. Macronutrients are those for which requirements are measurable in amounts in the diet at large levers for which more than 5-10 mg is usually consumed daily, including protein, carbohydrate, fat and others. Estimates have become more accurate as data on requirements have become available.

Dietary Reference Intakes: Vitamin A, Vitamin K, Arsenic, Boron, Chromium, Copper, Iodine, Iron, Manganese, Molybdenum, Nickel, Silicon, Vanadium, and Zinc The Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, [...]