A growing number of countries are 
developing and revising their dietary 
guidelines, and food guide education 
materials. 
We can think about our dietary guidelines 
in 2 major categories, Food-based and 
Biochemical. 
Food-based guidelines talk about what 
foods we need to eat to meet our 
nutritional needs, while the Biochemical 
guidelines define a nutrient and nutrient 
requirement. 
Both are estimations, and typically 
generalized to a population with some 
consideration of age and gender. 
Dietary guidelines are derived from 
research that's determining the 
nutritional needs of humans. 
In determining biological requirements, 
we've also developed clinical measures of 
status that can be used in medical and 
nutritional assessment. 
Health care experts can then use these 
assessments to help prevent malnutrition 
and disease. 
The guidelines, especially the food based 
guidelines, are designed to inform the 
public about nutritional requirements. 
In addition, they give information on 
nutrient content of foods, and are based 
on population based measures. 
Countries having their own guidelines 
face among many factors including 
scientific research, cultural and dietary 
habits and agricultural industries. 
Since different cultures have different 
food availabilities, food preferences, 
dietary patterns. 
In cultural definitions of foods, it's 
clear a global food guidance system would 
be inappropriate. 
In this lesson, you'll get a chance to 
look up the dietary guidelines in your 
country, and share and contrast this 
information with other students. 
To give you background and a starting 
point, let's consider the development of 
the dietary guidelines in the US. 
The US food guide system is based on the 
United States of Agriculture's research 
on the types of foods Americans consume, 
the nutrient composition of these foods 
and the relation to the individual's 
nutrient needs. 
So let's see how it's changed over time. 
We'll start in 1894. 
Here we can see somewhat of a generic 
message looking mainly at the American 
male. 
The next message looks a little more at 
keeping someone fit. 
Then we see the start of a number of food 
groups, numbering them. 
Simplifying that number a little bit. 
Making things even simpler by putting 
hassle-free in the title. 
And in 1980, we saw the first. 
Example of the dietary guidelines for 
Americans. 
And this is going to be revised every 5 
years. 
so you will see how that changes too. 
We see some reference to give you that we 
eat in some type of pattern. 
And then we start to see these examples 
that show a pictorial image that's 
supposed to guide us on how to eat. 
And here we have the good guide pyramid 
that started. 
That pyramid was changed a bit to make it 
more personable. 
And then we've gone back to an image that 
everyone can recognize, the thing that 
you eat off of, whether it be paper or 
plastic, ceramic or even a piece of 
bread, MyPlate. 
So what does this look like in pictures? 
we have the details of the groups here. 
Let's see what type of images were sent 
out to educate the public. 
So here we have that generic making us 
healthy example. 
If you notice, you'll show here pictures, 
of how much food someone should eat. 
So, if you couldn't read for example, you 
might try to get an understanding of, 
well that's what my food should look 
like, for an average family in a week. 
We even see pictures of happy children 
eating, so, if you eat well you will be 
happy, might have been the message they 
were trying Trying to convey. 
As we go on we now see groupings of foods 
before everything was put together. 
Here we see foods broken up into 
different sections. 
Again, different sections and through 
nutrition research and understanding we 
did, at different times, group different 
types of foods together. 
As we went on, we saw simplification of 
the message. 
Here are only 4 food groups are 
appearing. 
Continuing again this idea of the 
hassle-free guide, this is an older 
document, so it may get a little harder 
to read. 
But we do see a vegetable and fruit 
group, a bread and cereal group, a milk 
and cheese group and then the meat and 
poultry, fish and bean group. 
As I mentioned, we then went to the idea 
of providing dietary guidelines for 
Americans actually manuscripts giving 
more information, detailed education on 
what we should eat. 
And again this is still based on 
research. 
Continuing on with the Food Guidance 
System, we saw a change in the shape so 
it's not just blocks of food, now we saw 
some creativity coming in here, trying to 
make a Food wheel. 
And then there's that Food Pyramid that 
started in 92'. 
This was changed in 2005, and what you 
can see that's different here, is now 
there's a person in it, so we considered 
that maybe we needed to make this more 
individual, and also by having the person 
on the stairs, we see that activities 
brought into play. 
Still people were challenged by 
understanding how much they should eat, 
quantity wise. 
So then we come to MyPlate, a more 
straightforward image. 
Something you'd definitely recognise. 
It's a plate And as a nutrition educator 
I like that the dairy is a round circle. 
To me that guides someone to think about 
dairy as milk or yogurt, not just cheese 
which typically comes with more fat. 
Which is now considered to be excess 
calories. 
In addition to the food based guidelines 
research has also helped us understand 
nutritional requirements on the 
biochemical level. 
Measuring nutritional status either 
directly or indirectly within a study 
population, and expanding scientific 
findings to make intake recommendation 
based on age and gender. 
These dietary reference intakes tell us 
just how much carbohydrates, lipids, 
protein, vitamins and minerals we need to 
reach biological sufficiency. 
Keep in mind, recommendations are 
population based and each individual may 
actually need more or less. 
The recommendations are set to meet 
nutrient requirements, prevent disease 
and deficiency and avoid excess intake. 
So they may not be perfect for everybody, 
but we can use them to understand how we 
get these vitamins out of our food. 
Food and how much we need. 
Since dietary reference intakes are based 
primarily on deficiency we should first 
consider how nutritional deficiency 
develops and how we can evaluate status 
at various stages. 
For vitamin and mineral requirements the 
laboratory tests will give us the best 
model for determining Requirement. 
Once we have a biological graph print, we 
can scientifically determine the level of 
intake needed to obtain a given blood 
value, and in some cases, we may measure 
actual plasma or serum concentrations, 
and other cases we may measure enzyme 
activitiy. 
We can see here the stages of deveolpment 
In the assessment methods. 
So let's take a few minutes to consider 
some of the ways that we determine 
requirements for a few vitamins. 
When reviewing these slides, the details 
aren't as important. 
What I want you to get an idea of is how 
varied that the determinations can be. 
Just starting with Vitamin A. 
In determining Vitamin A status, numerous 
measures were brought together, to give 
an idea of how much Vitamin A should be 
stored in the body, if we're consuming 
enough. 
And the primary site where we store in 
the body is the liver. 
So that gave us a key location to look 
at, and a key thing to consider. 
So in this example we have a series of 
tests. 
Brought together to determine Vitamin A 
requirement. 
In the case of Vitamin B, we look more 
directly at blood values, as well as some 
measure of vitamin B activity. 
In the case of Folate, we have similar 
measures to vitamin B. 
Both cases showing actual blood measures 
as well as some enzyme or activity 
quotients or measure. In the case of 
Riboflavin, we consider not only the 
blood but also the urine. 
Here, we see an abbreviation. 
This stands for erythrocyte folate 
activity coefficient. 
And the more direct measure, the 
nonactive measure, is Urinary Riboflavin. 
But if you think about it. 
The Riboflavin that's made it to the 
urine is Riboflavin that's been 
processed. 
Thiamin again uses both blood and urine. 
Looking at direct measures and enzymatic 
measure. 
Niacin only looks at urine output. 
Once we scientifically derive the 
nutrient requirement, we can set an 
estimated average requirement, or EAR. 
This amount of a given nutrient will 
satisfy the needs of 50% of population. 
Then, by calculating 2 standard 
deviations above and below the EAR, we 
get the Recommended Dietary Allowance or 
RDA. 
This value, will be sufficient for 97 to 
98% of the population. 
We do not have scientific data, to 
support an EAR. 
We can extrapolate finding, and develop, 
an adequate intake, or AI value. 
An adequate intake level, is adequate for 
most people, and is often used, in 
recommendations for infants And children. 
Finally, we can also establish tolerable 
upper intake levels for UL. 
This is scientifically or clinically 
derived and prevents toxicity. 
This is mostly concerned when dealing 
with supplementaton rather than from food 
micro nutrients. 
Macro nutrient recommendations - first 
step to prevent disease either by 
deficiency or excess Keep in mind DRI 
values are set for population groups 
rather than individuals they can be used 
to assess adequacy of intake, plan diets 
and set policy and guidelines. 
Individuals should follow these 
recommendations with care, since we don't 
know the actual individual requirements. 
Using the RDA's and AI's targets and 
avoid exceeding the UL.