Diet planning and food intake evaluation are professional activities classically performed by comparing mean values of ingestion against reference values of nutrient and energy intakes, for either groups or individuals. Without considering certain intrinsic limitations of the reference values, such task may render equivocal conclusions with regard to nutritional adequacy. The nutritional recommendations, prepared as a joint effort between the US Institute of Medicine and Health Canada published since 1997 and known as Dietary Reference Intakes, offer a new model by establishing indices of nutrient intake and refining the concept of risk associated with diet evaluation. Errors of both intra and interindividual nature, due to the variability of an individual's feeding pattern, the uneven distribution of requirements within a population, respectively, and the small number of days of observation, are factors that together can have a large impact on the confidence of the analysis. For these reasons, only the judicious selection of the reference values, published in the form of tables from 1997 through 2005, should enable the user to reach the proper assessment. This paper had the objective of highlighting various critical characteristics of application and compiling the values in order to facilitate their use by both professionals and students of the area.
nutrition assessment; nutrients; food planning; nutritional policy
