The RDA nutrient values for vitamin and minerals are based on a low-end estimate, the amount of the nutrient which prevents deficiency disease. RDA has some allowances for error and individual variation but misses the advantages available by increasing intake of selected nutrients. Axioms Of Nutritional Programming A thoroughly technical analysis of food-body interactions is not yet feasible. The early steps in NP involve organizing an analytic structure to be immediately useful in medicine and general nutritional practice. Foods are complex tissues with a large number of different molecular species.
Food combinations act differently from foods in isolation.
Food acts first as information, calling up body procedures to handle its processing. Food molecules have identities, recognizable by immune surveillance procedures on the surface of the bowel and throughout the body. Information describing only the nutrient content of food is a subset of a truly adequate food description. Nutrients, once liberated from food, act differently in combination than singly. The body responses to nutrients may be altered by non-nutrient components of the food.