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Old Sat, Mar-05-11, 05:06
Osprey101 Osprey101 is offline
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Plan: SCD
Stats: 152/152/152 Male 70 inches
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Well, what *was* the RDA is now the Daily Reference Intake (DRI).

The RDA in turn came out of World War II, in order to determine the nutritional requirements of soldiers, civilians, and populations that might need nutritional support in war. They've been revised every few years (2-10 years) since.

Here's the thing: the DRI is for sufficiency for the average person, +/- 2 standard deviations. So, that covers 95% of the population, but also the 2.5% at the low end- for a total of 97.5% of all people under test.

Unfortunately, only the gross characteristics are taken into consideration. For example, the amount of D3 required to prevent rickets = easy to test. The amount required to reduce the risk of certain cancers? Much, much harder to evaluate.

Of course, if you're trying to design an MRE or a canned good, you're not too worried about long-term effects like heart disease, cancer, etc. You're worried about scurvy, rickets, night blindness, and so forth.

From this, it becomes difficult to say that complying with the DRI is any form of insurance against the effects of malnutrition for anything more than obvious, relatively short-term malnutrition.
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