Helpful information or misleading statement: Dietary Reference Values

To protect consumers, the manufacturer is obliged to indicate the percentage of the daily requirement of a vitamin or mineral covered by consumption of the product. For example: if a supplement contains 80 mg of vitamin C then, according to the law, it covers 100% of a person’s daily vitamin C requirements.

The absurdity of this statement becomes obvious as soon as you consider a simple example: the vitamin requirements of a man who stands at 6ft 5in tall and weighs 16st are certainly quite different to those of a 5ft woman who only weighs 8st. Older people have different requirements than younger people. People who take regular medication also need more vitamins, not to mention the recently discovered (and definitely prevalent) polymorphisms in the metabolism of vitamins. For example, MTHFR mutations are fairly common in folate metabolism. Findings on individual vitamin D resistance are also making a stir in the scientific community at present.

Labelling vitamin and mineral supplements according to Dietary Reference Values (DRV) is, therefore, a less than perfect method of covering an individual’s actual needs.

Explaining how these reference values come about in the first place is a science in its own right. A little research leads to the EFSA website that offers us the following explanations as consumers. In my opinion, however, they serve to obscure the issue rather than clarifying it:

Dietary reference values (DRVs) is an umbrella term for a set of nutrient reference values that includes the average requirement (AR), the population reference intake (PRI), the adequate intake (AI) and the reference intake range for macronutrients (RI). DRVs are not nutrient goals or recommendations for individuals (…). They are used by policy makers in the EU and its Member States to issue recommendations on nutrient intake to consumers. DRVs are also used as the basis for information on food labels and for establishing dietary guidelines. Such guidelines can help consumers make healthy dietary choices.

https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/dietary-reference-values

It’s hard to make “healthy dietary choices” based on guidelines that are borderline incomprehensible; the average vitamin supplement user probably won’t understand any of it.

What makes the Dietary Reference Values particularly annoying, however, is the fact that authorities interpret these values as binding and have for years been trying to ensure that they are the only values used for vitamin and mineral supplements. In Switzerland, for example, only 100% of the DRV is permitted as the recommended daily amount for minerals and trace elements, and 300% for vitamins. This is all happening in the name of consumer protection.

Another annoyance is the delay in adapting the DRVs in light of new scientific findings. For example, nutritional policy organisations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland increased the recommended intake of vitamin D from 5 µg to 20 µg in 2012! However, the mandatory basis for calculating the DRV on the label is still 5 µg. According to everything we now know about vitamin D, the 20 µg figure is already outdated – not to mention 5 µg.

Two years ago, the recommended daily intake of potassium for men and women was doubled from 2,000 mg to 4,000 mg. But no adjustments have been made here either. The original figure of 2,000 mg remains the official basis for calculating the DRV on the label. Again, it is imperative that these changes are implemented with greater urgency.

Reference values are like statistics – which is why the same applies here: don’t believe in any numbers you haven’t calculated yourself. The EFSA and the authorities may well continue to regard their figures as the gold standard, but we, as experts in vitamins, minerals and the entire spectrum of micronutrient medicine, are highly critical of this data.

And by the way: if you really believe that consumer protection protects the consumer, you might as well believe that jellyfish are made out of jelly. Or fish.