Recommended Daily Allowance RDA
The RDA figures have been subject of great debate and there have been many questions asked and many unanswered as to whether the RDA figures are scientific or political.
It would appear that the RDA values have been used to ensure that limited research and proper scientific analysis has been undertaken since the original RDA values were created as a bench mark for optimising the intake of dietary vitamins and minerals.
It has been shown that the original RDA experiments were flawed in their approach. This has been recently been scientifically proven by Dr. Steve Hickey and Dr. Hilary Roberts who have challenged the original findings based upon the half life of Vitamin C. They have written a book that identifies why the experiments are a best, misleading and at worse putting the lives of millions of people at risk, from insufficient intake of health optimising vitamins and minerals.
Dr. Hickey explains that by waiting long enough the body will have already used or got rid of the ingested Vitamin C. Subsequently, after a long period (12 hours) when tested for Vitamin C the experiment found little or no Vitamin C in the body or blood stream. This was then used as evidence to prove that Vitamin C was not required by the human body in large amounts and therefore taking more than 60 mg per day would have no effect as the body would excrete any excess.
By changing the time frame and testing the subject shortly after the ingestion would create a significant change in the results and therefore dramatically alter the RDA figures and assumptions. There is an interesting article at http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/hickey/ details the basis for discrediting the RDA values on the half-life of Vitamin C and how quickly it is absorbed or excreted by the human body.
Steve Hickey and Hillary Roberts have written a book about the RDA myth and you can view a copy by clicking on the following link. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=pi62NSuzIV&isbn=1411607244&itm=1
It would appear that the RDA values have been used to ensure that limited research and proper scientific analysis has been undertaken since the original RDA values were created as a bench mark for optimising the intake of dietary vitamins and minerals.
It has been shown that the original RDA experiments were flawed in their approach. This has been recently been scientifically proven by Dr. Steve Hickey and Dr. Hilary Roberts who have challenged the original findings based upon the half life of Vitamin C. They have written a book that identifies why the experiments are a best, misleading and at worse putting the lives of millions of people at risk, from insufficient intake of health optimising vitamins and minerals.
Dr. Hickey explains that by waiting long enough the body will have already used or got rid of the ingested Vitamin C. Subsequently, after a long period (12 hours) when tested for Vitamin C the experiment found little or no Vitamin C in the body or blood stream. This was then used as evidence to prove that Vitamin C was not required by the human body in large amounts and therefore taking more than 60 mg per day would have no effect as the body would excrete any excess.
By changing the time frame and testing the subject shortly after the ingestion would create a significant change in the results and therefore dramatically alter the RDA figures and assumptions. There is an interesting article at http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/hickey/ details the basis for discrediting the RDA values on the half-life of Vitamin C and how quickly it is absorbed or excreted by the human body.
Steve Hickey and Hillary Roberts have written a book about the RDA myth and you can view a copy by clicking on the following link. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=pi62NSuzIV&isbn=1411607244&itm=1