Your "Personal Daily Allowance" of a nutrient is DietPower's umbrella term for the amount thought to be right for you, personally. (Don't confuse it with the Daily Value cited on food labels. Daily Values aren't adjusted to you individually; they're for an average person on a 2000-calorie diet, as the labels explain.) Your Personal Daily Allowance is always equal to one of the following:
The
Food and Nutrition Board's (FNB's) Recommended Dietary
Allowance (RDA), which depends on your age, sex, and whether you are
pregnant or lactating. (For several nutrients, it also depends on your
body weight or whether you smoke.) The nutrients in DietPower that have RDAs are calcium, copper, dietary fiber, folate, iron, magnesium, niacin, phosphorus, protein, riboflavin, selenium, thiamin, vitamin A, vitamin B6, vitamin
B12, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, and zinc. (DietPower does
not use the RDA for protein as
your PDA, however -- see paragraph 3, below).
The
FNB's Adequate Intake (AI). This figure is for nutrients that don't have an RDA
because not enough is known about them. For such nutrients, the FNB doesn't
recommend a particular intake, but it does recognize an intake that appears
to sustain good health. DietPower uses the AI in setting the PDA for four
nutrients: manganese, potassium, sodium, and water.
Diet
Power's Daily Allowance (DPDA). This applies to ten items -- alcohol, calories, cholesterol, monounsaturated fat,
polyunsaturated fat, saturated fat, sugars, total carbohydrate, total fat and
trans fat -- that
have no RDA or AI, and to protein. For these ten nutrients, DietPower has established its
own daily allowance through review of scientific literature. No one can
say with 100-percent certainty that the DPDA is correct for you, but the
best evidence shows it is probably
safe for the average person of your age, sex, and size.
Your own handmade PDA. For any nutrient, you can customize your daily allowance instead of using DietPower's. (DietPower cannot endorse the new value, of course, since we have no control over it.) See Personal Daily Allowances, Editing Your.
To learn the default PDA of any nutrient, click its name above or on the list in Nutrients, Information on.
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Last Modified: 12/30/10