Introduction

Understanding an individual or group’s dietary intake and nutritional status is a two-step process. As discussed in Childhood Anthropometric and Dietary Assessment Field Techniques, the first step is to obtain accurate food intake records with 24 hour food recalls, food journals, or food frequency questionnaires. The second step calls for calculating intake of foods and nutrients from those records with food composition databases and other software and then comparing intakes against standards of desirable intake like the Dietary Reference Intake (DRI), or Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). In this lesson we will learn about the DRIs used for evaluating dietary intake data of children and the available resources that can help us do so.


Lesson

Read the following information and thoroughly review the Required Resources (readings and media) BEFORE going through the Graded Activities. Please be aware of the due dates associated with this lesson. This lesson includes three parts, you can navigate between the parts using the tabs or the “Back to Parts” button. Be sure to go through the resources and activities in ALL parts of this lesson.