The “Dietary Reference Intakes for Japanese (2015) ” is issued by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, in accordance with the Health Promotion Law. They represent the standards for optimal intakes of energy and nutrients, as well as the basics required for maintenance and promotion of health of the Japanese population. The current version has been revised in order to take into account the requirements for “prevention of progression of lifestyle-related diseases”, the “target BMI range” and the “PDCA (plan, do, check, act) cycle for application”. Based on the current standards, health professionals, especially dietitians, should set concrete objectives for application, and select the most appropriate method for assessment of dietary status.

The Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) for Japanese stipulated by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare represent the standard energy and nutrient intakes desirable for maintenance and promotion of public health. In this context, information on nutrient content appearing on food package labels, which is important when consumers are selecting particular foodstuffs, would naturally have an impact on health. Therefore, the system for nutrition labeling in Japan has been set to be consistent with government health and nutrition policy, as well as to ensure consistency with global health policy, such as the Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health proposed by the WHO, through the Codex Alimentarius Commission. In line with the enforcement of Food Labeling Standards based on the Food Labeling Act in April 2015, the Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs) , which represent the standard for nutrition labeling, have been revised based on the 2015 edition of the DRIs for Japanese. In this paper, we describe the relationship between the DRIs for Japanese and the NRVs for nutrition labeling.

The purpose of this study was to clarify the direct and indirect effects of cognitive factors (economic satisfaction: ES, mental and emotional well-being: MEWB) and dietary diversity (DD) on self-rated health (SH) of men and women separately among healthy elderly aged >65 years living in A municipality in Okinawa. A total of 1,525 respondents excluding long-term care needs participants were examined at the baseline. DD was characterized by a combination of dishes, i.e. staple, main dishes, sub-dishes, milk and dairy product, and fruits. When the fit of hypothetical models was evaluated using covariance structure analysis, models showing indirect effects mediated by MEWB and by DD were statistically more acceptable (CFI=0.963, NFI=0.944, RMSEA=0.034) , in comparison with the direct effects of ES on SH in models for both men and women. When a more comprehensive examination was performed by integration of direct with indirect effects, the effect of MEWB on SH was larger in women, and that of ES was larger in men. The present findings suggest that creating support for MEWB based on income support might enhance the SH of healthy elderly people through improvement of DD.

The aim of this study was to clarify differences in subjective appetite and gastric motility after ingestion of a solution of either a noncaloric artificial sweetener, sucralose (SR) , or sucrose (S) . Twelve young women began fasting at 10:00 pm on the previous night, then ingested SR and S, or plain water (W) as control, at equivalent temperature, volume (15℃, 150 mL) and sweetness at 9:00 am on different days. The subjects were administered the separate sweet samples (30 mL) orally and instructed to swallow after sufficient mixing in the mouth, which was repeated 5 times. For evaluation of sweet taste, the scores before ingestion, and during ingestion of the 1st and 5th cups of the sample were used. Electrogastrograms, electrocardiograms (heart rate) , and body temperatures were obtained 20 min before and 65 min after sample ingestion. Subjective appetite was evaluated before and every 15 min after ingestion. Both of the sweet-tasting samples, but especially SR, suppressed hunger immediately after ingestion, and postprandial subjective appetite increased according to the perceived sweetness (S and SR) . Differences in electrogastrogram responses were found after ingestion of S and SR; elevated HR was observed only after ingestion of S. Our results suggest that SR increases neither heart rate nor body temperature, but temporarily suppresses subjective appetite and alters gastric motility in comparison with S.