Nutrient reference values explained

The Australian and New Zealand Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs) publish several different numbers for the same nutrient, because they answer different questions. Knowing which is which explains most of what you see on a target row or in a report.

The five references

• RDI — Recommended Dietary Intake. The daily intake that meets the needs of nearly all healthy people of a given age and sex. Where an RDI exists, it is the number to aim at.
• AI — Adequate Intake. Used where the evidence is not strong enough to set an RDI. It is based on what healthy people actually eat, and it does the same job as an RDI.
• EAR — Estimated Average Requirement. The intake that meets the needs of half of healthy people. It is a tool for assessing groups, not for setting one person's goal, so Foodzone never uses it as a target. Reports show it as its own section.
• UL — Upper Level of Intake. The highest daily intake likely to pose no adverse effects. A ceiling, never a goal.
• SDT — Suggested Dietary Target. The intake associated with a lower risk of chronic disease. It sits well above the RDI or AI for the same nutrient — a stretch figure, not the adequacy figure.

Two more appear alongside them: the AMDR, the acceptable range for the share of daily energy coming from each macronutrient, and the EER, the estimated energy requirement.

Which one your target uses

Every nutrient row has two values, and each has its own rule:

• Target — the RDI, or the AI where no RDI exists. Never the SDT. Protein, carbohydrate and fat are the exception: their targets come from a share of the energy requirement.
• Max — the UL, or the SDT maximum where there is no UL. Protein, carbohydrate and fat get none: the top of the AMDR is the upper edge of a published range, not a limit to hold you under, so those three rows show a max only once you set one yourself under Custom.

A blank tells you something too. A blank target means there is no such reference for the profile — alcohol has no daily goal, only a limit. A blank max means no upper limit applies, as with thiamin and with the three macros.

For where the macro and food group defaults come from, see How your targets are worked out.

See it for a single nutrient

Open a nutrient from the diary summary and expand About these targets at the foot of the dialog. It lists every reference the profile has for that nutrient — not only the winner — each with its plain-language name, and marks the ones the row is standing on · your Target and · your Max. Where a reference is published as a band rather than a figure, both are shown: 460–920 mg published · 690 mg in use — the midpoint. A row you have set yourself opens with a line saying so. The EAR is the one reference that never appears there, because it is never a target; reports give it its own section instead.

A max is never a goal

The two numbers pull in opposite directions, and only one of them is something to reach. On the diary summary the bar is plain progress toward the target: the max stays out of it until intake crosses, and then the bar turns red.

Select the row and the detail dialog behind it draws the whole zone. Where the nutrient has a max, its bar becomes a track rather than a fill: the stretch from target to max is banded green as the range to sit in, the ground past the max is red, and both figures are ticked and labelled underneath, so the ceiling is visible from the start rather than appearing once you have crossed it. The fill says where the day landed — purple while still short of the target, green inside the band, amber from four-fifths of the way to the max, red past it. A row with a max and no target — alcohol, Extras — reads as a limit all the way through: the headline says 0.3 of 0.5 serves limit, and the target below it says Keep under 0.50 serves where another row would show a figure to aim at.

Sodium shows both at once: an adult's daily target is 690 mg, the adequate intake, and the max is 2,000 mg. The target is what the body needs, not a number to work up to, and the 2,000 mg is a ceiling. (Adults have no UL for sodium in the AU/NZ references — only ages 1 to 18 carry one — so an adult's ceiling comes from the SDT maximum instead.)

The chronic disease stretch figures

Seven nutrients carry an SDT, and every one of them also has an RDI or an AI. That is why the SDT is never your default target: it is always a second number beside a primary one, for people who want to aim past adequacy at chronic disease prevention.

Compare those with the ordinary targets for a man 19–30 and the gap is clear: fibre AI 30 g against an SDT of 38 g, vitamin C RDI 45 mg against 220 mg, potassium AI 3,800 mg against 4,700 mg.

Folate's SDT is a range, not a single figure: the NRVs suggest an extra 100–400 µg DFE over current intakes, about 300–600 µg DFE in total. Reports print it as the range. It is not a target to aim below — folate's daily target stays its RDI of 400 µg DFE.

To track one of these figures instead of the default, open Profile from the diary, select Edit next to Targets, then Nutrients, and on that nutrient's row switch Custom on and type the number in. Switch Custom back off to return to the recommended value.

The source for all of the above is the NHMRC's chronic disease summary at eatforhealth.gov.au. Values differ by age, sex and life stage; a nutrition report prints the ones used for the profile it was built from.