The government plays a significant role in the population’s nutrition and the correlated challenges. The most dangerous of them for most of human history was food insufficiency, which is why the government stimulated food production and distribution (Mozaffarian et al., 2018). Subsequently, the government got involved in people’s nutrition, using a spectrum of policies to operate in this field. Some of those policies are recommendations related to population education and involve information spreading through various sources like mass media and school curriculum features focused on nutrition (Mozaffarian et al., 2018). Nowadays, many programs and projects created by the government inform people about different nutritional challenges, food intake specificities, and other aspects of nutrition. The primary purpose of the government nutrition recommendations is to educate the population in terms of nutrition and maintain a high average health status through promoting healthy food and vitamins.
Various sets of dietary reference intake (DRI) exist for the same purposes. They include Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs), Estimated Average Requirements (EARs), Adequate Intakes (AIs), and Tolerable Upper Intake Level, or UL for short (Godswill et al., 2020). EARs and RDAs estimate average intake levels of daily nutrients according to the body’s requirements. Both DRIs provide requirements for healthy individuals, but RDAs “cover individuals with higher than the average requirements” (Godswill et al., 2020, p. 18). Healthy people can use these sets to identify the specific intake of vitamins. Furthermore, when EARs and RDAs cannot be set due to insufficient information, AIs are published (Godswill et al., 2020). They also present an intake level but not a requirement. They can be used when the scientific evidence is insufficient to define an EAR or RDA. Finally, ULs present tolerable intake amounts for the vitamins with documented toxicity (Godswill et al., 2020). They can be used to prevent vitamin poisoning when a specific vitamin has a high toxicity level. Overall, all DRIs can be effective in nutrition and population health.
References
Godswill, A. G., Somtochukwu, I. V., Ikechukwu, A. O., & Kate, E. C. (2020). Health benefits of micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) and their associated deficiency diseases: A systematic review. International Journal of Food Sciences, 3(1), 1-32. Web.
Mozaffarian, D., Angell, S. Y., Lang, T., & Rivera, J. A. (2018). Role of government policy in nutrition – barriers to and opportunities for healthier eating. Bmj, 361. Web.