Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA)

Last Update - 7th August 2015

The Recommended Dietary Allowance or RDA (sometimes referred to as the "Recommended Daily Allowance") is defined as "the average daily dietary intake level that is sufficient to meet the nutrient requirements of nearly all (approximately 98 percent) healthy individuals".

Enter your age and sex and then click "calculate" in the search box below to list the RDAs for all essential nutrients.

(Note: If insufficient data exists to determine the RDA, then an "Adequate Intake" or "AI" is given, which has a greater uncertainty than an RDA.)

These values are from the US Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) of the National Academy of Sciences, and are given for all essentials vitamins, minerals and trace elements such as vitamin a, vitamin c, zinc, potassium and iron.

Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) Search age sex   male female female (pregnant) female (lactating)

Reference Daily Intake or Recommended Daily Intake

There are many different names and formats for the recommended average daily or dietary intake. Our calculator above quotes for what is commonly referred to as the Recommended Dietary Allowance or the recommended daily allowance. This is the value used in our calculators but there is also the Reference Daily Intake also known as the Recommended Daily Intake or RDI, again there are two names for the same acronym! You may ask what is then the difference between the RDA (recommended daily/dietary allowance) and the RDI (reference/recommended dietary intake) ? The RDI is an extension of the RDA including both the recommended intakes and adequate intakes. Both of these are age related recommendations

Further information can be found from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_Daily_Intake