Software tools for practical application of human nutrient requirements in food-based social science research

Abstract

This article focuses on the use of human nutrition requirements for applied social science research by non-nutrition experts.  Our motivation is to provide the data and default nutrient requirements to calculate the Cost of Nutrient Adequacy (CoNA) least-cost diet meeting specified nutrient requirements. The final format of the resulting datafile is ready for use in the CoNA protocol. However, we expect this article and associated software tools to be generally useful to social science researchers interested in nutrition-related research questions and the potential implications of food systems’ changes for nutrition. We provide readily usable data files (Supplement 1) containing the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) and guide non-nutrition experts through appropriate use to establish the nutrient needs and assess the adequacy of diets for populations and groups. We complement the DRIs with companion data files (Supplement 2) containing the WHO Child Growth Standards and WHO Growth References for School-Aged Children and Adolescents percentiles tables of anthropometric measures, extract the median heights and weights, and calculate median reference values for the age-sex groups consistent with the DRIs nutrient requirements. We provide calculations of energy requirements using the DRIs Estimated Energy Requirement (EER) equation and WHO growth references for all age-sex groups and physical activity levels. We also calculate the protein Estimated Average Requirement (EAR) per kilogram body weight according to the WHO growth references. For children under two, we provide nutrient needs required from food in Supplement 3. We provide Stata code and R syntax (Supplements 4 and 5) to compile the single data files into usable datasets for statistical analysis. Finally, we also provide data files (Supplement 6) with the recently proposed harmonized average values and upper levels and briefly discuss their potential application.