Research Paper (3)

Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Time: 11 PM
Place: Kitchen

A healthful diet provides sufficient amounts of all the nutrients that your body needs. The question is, how much is enough? Today, three sets of recommendations provide the answers. The first, and most familiar, is the RDA, or Recommended Dietary Allowance. The second, originally known as the Estimated Safe and Adequate Daily Dietary Intakes (ESADDIs), now shortened to Adequate Intake or simply AI, describes recommended amounts of nutrients for which no RDAs exist. The third is the DRI, or Dietary Reference Intake. It is like an umbrella that includes RDAs plus several more categories of nutrient recommendations (Webb 39).
Given busy lifestyles, who has the time and energy to study so many guidelines? Popping a supplement seems like an easy way to avoid the headache. Many people consider vitamin and mineral supplements a quick and easy
way to get nutrients without so much shopping and kitchen time and without all the pesky fat and sugars in food. Others take supplements as “nutritional insurance.”
And some even use supplements as substitutes for medical drugs. In general, nutrition experts, including the American Dietetic Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Research Council, prefer that you invest your time and money whipping up meals and
snacks that supply the nutrients you need in a balanced, tasty diet. Nonetheless, most experts admit that in certain circumstances, supplements can be a definite plus.