RDA's and equivalent necessary food intake

[James Jose]

Hi, I was told by a nutrition related person that most people
don't/can't eat enough food nutritious enough to meet RDA's.
He then showed me a list of amount of food one has to eat to
get the required quantity of micronutrients. For example he
said to meet my daily requirement of vitamin C I have to eat 6
oranges and so on for each vitamin/mineral or even protiens. I
would like to know if he was correct and if so could anyone
point me to links where I can find similar charts of required
nutirents and equivalent natural food source available ?

thanks a zillion jamie

[Bicker 200]

On 10 Jul 2003 02:00:05 -0700, jamesjose@yeayea.com (james
jose) wrote:
> I was told by a nutrition related person that most people
> don't/can't eat enough food nutritious enough to meet
> RDA's. He then showed me a list of amount of food one has
> to eat to get the required quantity of micronutrients.
> For example he said to meet my daily requirement of
> vitamin C I have to eat 6 oranges and so on for each
> vitamin/mineral or even protiens.

It's called hyperbole. That may indeed be true, if your ONLY
source of vitamin C was oranges. However, oranges aren't
even the best source of vitamin C, and surely not anyone's
ONLY source.

The reality is that most Americans (at least) do get enough of
some nutrients and not enough of others, due to poor food
choices. The average American who isn't dieting tends to be
deficient in nutrients that come from vegetables and fruit,
while the average American who is dieting tends to be
deficient in protein. Of course, that's not true of anyone who
reads this newsgroup. <grin>

--
¤bicker¤ "It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really
is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and
reassuring."
- Carl Sagan

People are, of course, welcome to place whatever
irrelevant limitations on their ability to enjoy something
that they wish.

[Pbeyer]

james jose wrote:

> Hi, I was told by a nutrition related person that most
> people don't/can't eat enough food nutritious enough to meet
> RDA's. He then showed me a list of amount of food one has to
> eat to get the required quantity of micronutrients. For
> example he said to meet my daily requirement of vitamin C I
> have to eat 6 oranges and so on for each vitamin/mineral or
> even protiens. I would like to know if he was correct and if
> so could anyone point me to links where I can find similar
> charts of required nutirents and equivalent natural food
> source available ?
>
> thanks a zillion jamie

Sounds like someone trying sell supplements or pull your leg.
It's pretty easy to get well over the RDA for vit C-- and the
average intake of adults is already well above the RDA.
Oranges are also not the only thing that provides vitamin C in
the diet-- cabbage, peppers, grapefruit, tomato, potato are
examples of other sources. These days, tons of foods (like
breakfast cereals) are fortified with vitamins as well.

You can look at USDA's food composition data:

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/SR12/sr12.html

or to answer your serving size/orange example you can
look here:

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ah/food/data/fruit.vitamin

Pete

[Bryher]

another one:

http://www.walford.com/nutrition.htm

>
> james jose wrote: You can look at USDA's food
> composition data:
>
> http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/SR12/sr12.html
>
> or to answer your serving size/orange example you can
> look here:
>
> http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ah/food/data/fruit.vitamin
>
> Pete