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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Davis, California » Western Human Nutrition Research Center » Obesity and Metabolism Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #360674
Title: Proposed harmonized nutrient reference values for populations

Author
item Allen, Lindsay - A
item CARRIQUIRY, ALICIA - Iowa State University
item MURPHY, SUZANNE - University Of Hawaii

Submitted to: Advances in Nutrition
Publication Type: Review Article
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/21/2019
Publication Date: 11/8/2019
Citation: Allen, L.H., Carriquiry, A.L., Murphy, S.P. 2019. Proposed harmonized nutrient reference values for populations. Advances in Nutrition. https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmz096.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmz096

Interpretive Summary: Harmonized nutrient intake recommendations for use across a region or the world are often needed for assessing the adequacy of nutrient intakes, providing advice to improve intakes, formulating complementary foods, estimating the levels of nutrients to add to fortified foods and monitoring their effects on intake, and labeling food products. Moreover, assessment of the adequacy and safety of nutrient intakes of population groups should be based on average requirements and upper levels of intake, but a serious limitation is that the WHO and FAO tables do not provide reference values for average requirements or safe upper levels of intake, and many countries or organizations lack these values for some nutrients in their own micronutrient recommendation tables. Since actual requirements vary little around the world, and reference values always include some uncertainties, it is not unreasonable to combine current recommendations from different sources to construct a harmonized set of values. The objective of this review is to develop harmonized nutrient reference values for average nutrient requirements (H-ARs) and upper levels of intake (H-ULs) that can be used globally to evaluate intakes across populations. The approach incorporated the framework and terminology recommended by the United Nations University (UNU), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) and its former Institute of Medicine (IOM), and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). After reviewing available alternatives, the proposed harmonized values were selected from standards set by EFSA (for Europe) and the IOM (for the USA and Canada), giving priority to those published most recently. The proposed values are justified and their limitations discussed. Ideally these methods should be further reviewed by an international group of experts. Meanwhile the approach used in this article can provide an efficient way of harmonizing nutrient reference values for many applications in global and regional contexts.

Technical Abstract: Globally or regionally harmonized nutrient intake reference values are often required for assessing the adequacy of nutrient intakes, providing advice to improve intakes, formulating complementary foods, estimating levels of addition of nutrients to fortified foods and monitoring their effects on intake, and product labeling at the global or regional level. Moreover, assessment of the adequacy and safety of nutrient intakes of population groups should be based on average requirements and upper levels of intake, but a serious limitation is that the WHO and FAO tables provide almost no reference values for average requirements or safe upper levels of intake, and many countries or organizations lack these values for some nutrients. Since actual requirements vary little around the world, and reference values always include some uncertainties, it is not unreasonable to combine current recommendations from different sources to construct a harmonized set of values. The objective of this review is to develop harmonized nutrient reference values for average nutrient requirements (H-ARs) and upper levels of intake (H-ULs) that can be used globally to evaluate intakes across populations. The approach incorporated the framework and terminology recommended by the United Nations University (UNU), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) and its former Institute of Medicine (IOM), and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). After reviewing available alternatives, the proposed harmonized values were selected from standards set by EFSA (for Europe) and the IOM (for the USA and Canada), giving priority to those published most recently. Justifications for the proposed values are presented, along with discussion of their limitations. Ideally these methods should be further reviewed by an international group of experts. Meanwhile the approach used in this article can provide an efficient way of harmonizing nutrient reference values for many applications in global and regional contexts.