Glossary Food Fortification

1. Average Intake (AI) is a recommended intake value based on observed or experimentally determined approximations or estimates of nutrient intake by a group or groups of apparently healthy people that are assumed to be adequate.
2. Dietary Recommended Intake (DRI) is a quantitative estimate of a nutrient intake that is used as a reference value for planning and assessing diets for apparently healthy people. Examples include AIs, EARs, RDAs and ULs
3. Essential micronutrient refers to any micronutrient, which is needed for growth and development and the maintenance of healthy life, that is normally consumed as a constituent of food and cannot be synthesized in adequate amounts by the body.
4. Estimated Average Requirement (EAR) is the average (median) daily nutrient intake level estimated to meet the needs of half the healthy individuals in a particular age and gender group. The EAR is used to derive the Recommended Dietary Allowance.
5. Nutrient requirement refers to the lowest continuing intake level of a nutrient that will maintain a defined level of nutriture in an individual for a given criterion of nutritional adequacy.
6. Processed foods are those in which food raw materials have been treated industrially so as to preserve them. Some may be formulated by mixing several different ingredients.
7. A premix is a mixture of a micronutrient(s) and another ingredient, often the same food that is to be fortified, that is added to the food vehicle to improve the distribution of the micronutrient mix within the food matrix and to reduce the separation (segregation) between the food and micronutrient particles. 
8. Quality assurance (QA) refers to the implementation of planned and systematic activities necessary to ensure that products or services meet quality standards. The performance of quality assurance can be expressed numerically as the results of quality control exercises. 
9. Quality control (QC) refers to the techniques and assessments used to document compliance of the product with established technical standards, through the use of objective and measurable indicators. 
10. Restoration is the addition of essential nutrients to foods to restore amounts originally present in the natural product, but unavoidably lost during processing (such as milling), storage or handling.
11. Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) are defined by the United States Food and Nutrition Board and are conceptually the same as the Recommended Nutrient Intake (RNI), but may have a slightly different values for some micronutrients.
12. The Recommended Nutrient Intake (RNI) is the daily intake that meets the nutrient requirements of almost all apparently healthy individuals in an ageand sex-specific population group. It is set at the Estimated Average Requirement plus 2 standard deviations.
13. Targeted fortification refers to the fortification of foods designed for specific population subgroups, such as complementary weaning foods for infants.
14. The technological limit is the maximum level of micronutrient addition that does not change the organoleptic or physical properties of the food. The Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL) is to the highest average daily nutrient intake level unlikely to pose risk of adverse health effects to almost all (97.5%) apparently healthy individuals in an age- and sex-specific population group.
15. Universal fortification is equivalent to mass fortification.
16. Universal salt iodization (USI) refers to the addition of iodine to all salt for both human and animal consumption.
17. Usual intake refers to an individual’s average intake over a relatively long period of time.