2025 Volume 52 Issue 2 Pages 342-352
The Dietary Reference Intakes for Japanese (2025 edition) (hereafter referred to as DRIs) is a basic and comprehensive guideline for healthy diets that is revised and published by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare every five years. In the past, its use was limited to group-meal preparations, but recently, it has become widely used including in health checkup practices. The DRIs considers the amount of energy and 35 types of nutrients that should be consumed, and specifies the amount of energy and 33 types of nutrients. The DRIs is characterized as a quantitative guideline, but not as a qualitative guideline.
For energy, estimated energy requirement and "target BMI range" are specified, and for nutrients, five types of indicators (estimated average requirement, recommended dietary allowance, adequate intake, tolerable upper limit, tentative dietary goal) are specified. Among these, tentative dietary goal set for the prevention of lifestyle-related diseases may be the most important indicator for those working in health checkups. In addition, the relationship between energy and nutrients is explained for hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and osteoporosis. Although this chapter does not provide any indication of the amount of intake that should be achieved, and only provides a qualitative explanation, it is valuable in understanding the characteristics of lifestyle-related diseases. In addition, there is an explanation on the use of DRIs, and the PDCA cycle is introduced as a basis, emphasizing the importance of estimating habitual nutrient intakes (performing a dietary assessment that is feasible and has a sufficient degree of reliability) and comparing it with the amount of intake that should be achieved as set by the DRIs.
The DRIs has already changed from simply providing numerical information to guideline that is "used" in its entirety. The (2025 edition) will be used for five years from April 2025. We hope it be used correctly and broadly.
