So this video is about dietary reference intakes. Think of the dietary reference intakes as an umbrella. So it's the overarching category with subcategories underneath it, including acceptable macronutrient distribution range or IMDR, estimated average requirement, EAR, recommended dietary allowance or RDA, adequate intake, AI, or tolerable upper intake level, UL. And these are all considered dietary reference intakes. I know that sometimes students get confused because there's so many different acronyms, but they all do fit under the umbrella of dietary reference intakes.
And hopefully with the name acceptable macronutrient distribution range, the word macronutrient in there, you think of the macronutrients, so carbohydrates, protein, and fat. And these are ranges that were defined based on science to help prevent chronic disease and be optimal for our health. So when you think about these ranges, think about your total calorie intake and what percent of each of the macronutrients should be coming from, what percent of the calories should be coming from each of these macronutrients. So for carbohydrates, 45 to 65 percent of your calories should be coming from carbohydrates.
10 to 35 percent should be coming from protein. 20 to 35 percent from fat. Because these are ranges, it really gives you a flexibility in what percentages they have coming from those macronutrients. The rest of these are related to the micronutrients or vitamins and minerals. So the first one, estimated hours requirement or EAR.
So if we look at a normal bell curve, what this is looking at is for nutrient where the mean might be within a population of what's going to be safe and adequate of that particular nutrient. We look at dietary recommended allowance. Essentially what they're doing is using a statistical method to take to take the EAR and convert it into a recommended dietary allowance. So they're using statistics to be able to determine what level would that nutrient, if it was consumed, what amount would allow 97% to 98% of the population to meet their needs for a nutrient.
So you can imagine that if we set it at 50% or the EAR, there's going to be some people who are going to need more than that if they're on this end of the curve. and then maybe some on this side that maybe on this side they're going to be met, but those on this side may not. So when we set it up this high, it allows us to meet most people's needs without it becoming too much. Inadequate intake, or AI, is established for some vitamins and minerals when the research that the scientists review is not sufficient to really establish and estimate average requirement and therefore an RDA. So they use it based on estimates and from...
literature that's out there and also observations and they establish an amount or number related to that particular nutrient. The last one is a tolerable upper intake level or UL and what this is showing you is that there's a level at which if it's consumed at high enough quantities above it's above the RDA it's consumed in high enough quantities consistently over time it may lead to toxicity. So this double arrow here is just showing you that there is a margin of safety here.
Meaning that, for instance, if your calcium recommendation is 1,000 milligrams, and that's the RDA that was set for your age group, your gender, then consuming 1,001 milligrams is not going to give you a toxicity. It has to be higher. Based on literature that we've seen, they'll establish at what level that is.
And again, if you're consuming above that, you're likely to get a toxicity. Most of the time when we see toxicities, it's from people who are taking high dose supplements of different vitamins and minerals. It really isn't typically coming from food. And we'll talk more about that in this class as well, thinking about use of dietary supplements. If you have any questions about these concepts, feel free to ask me or the TAs.