How % of Daily Intake Is Calculated

When you turn on Additional Nutrients, Nutrify shows each nutrient as a percentage of what you should get in a day. This guide explains where those numbers come from, why some nutrients show no percentage at all, and why they sometimes disagree with the label on a package. Every figure below is linked to its source so you can check our working.

Where the numbers come from

Nutrify compares what you logged against the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. These are the same reference values dietitians and food scientists work from, and the National Institutes of Health publishes the full tables at ODS Nutrient Recommendations.

For most nutrients that means the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA), the amount that meets the needs of about 97% of healthy people. Where the evidence is not strong enough for an RDA, the DRIs give an Adequate Intake (AI) instead, and Nutrify uses that. Sodium uses the Chronic Disease Risk Reduction intake, which is an upper bound rather than a goal. The background to how these categories work is set out in the National Academies' own Dietary Reference Intakes: The Essential Guide to Nutrient Requirements.

Why age and sex, but not weight and height

Your reference intakes are set by your age and your sex. Nutrify reads both from your profile.

This surprises people who expect a nutrition app to scale everything to body size, so it is worth being clear: micronutrient requirements do not work that way. A person weighing 60 kg and a person weighing 100 kg, of the same age and sex, have the same iron requirement. Scaling those numbers by weight would produce figures that no reference table or dietitian would recognise.

Age and sex genuinely do change them, sometimes a lot:

• Iron is 18 mg a day for women aged 19 to 50, and 8 mg for men. It drops back to 8 mg for women after about 50, when menstruation stops. Source: NIH ODS Iron.
• Calcium rises from 1,000 mg to 1,200 mg for women at 51, and for men at 71. Source: NIH ODS Calcium.
• Potassium was revised in 2019, and is now an Adequate Intake of 3,400 mg for men and 2,600 mg for women rather than the older single figure. Source: NIH ODS Potassium.
• Teenagers aged 14 to 18 have their own set of values, higher than adults for calcium and phosphorus because they are still building bone.

There is one exception to the age-and-sex rule. Saturated fat is defined as a share of your total energy intake rather than a fixed weight, capped at 10% of calories in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. That one does move with your calorie target, so a bigger target means a slightly higher saturated fat ceiling.

Targets and limits are not the same thing

This is the most important thing to understand about the percentages, because 100% is good news for some nutrients and a warning for others.

Targets are nutrients you are trying to reach. Vitamins and most minerals fall here. Getting to 100% means you covered your day. Going somewhat over is generally fine, and the bar fills green.

Limits are ceilings you are trying to stay under. Sodium, saturated fat, cholesterol, caffeine and alcohol fall here. For these, 100% is the line rather than the goal, and the reading turns red once you pass it.

Nutrify already works this way for sugar on your home screen gauge, and Additional Nutrients follows the same colour language so a red number always means the same thing across the app.

Why some nutrients show no percentage

A few nutrients show the amount you ate and no percentage at all. This is deliberate, not a bug or missing data.

• Trans fat. The guidance is to keep intake as low as possible. That is real advice, but it is not a quantity, so a percentage would be meaningless.
• Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat. These have an acceptable range rather than a single daily figure.

In each case Nutrify would rather show you the amount and tell you why the percentage is blank than invent a number that looks authoritative and is not.

A correction, and why cholesterol is not on that list

An earlier version of this article said the FDA removed the Daily Value for cholesterol in 2016 and that Nutrify therefore showed no percentage for it. That was wrong, and we have corrected both the article and the app.

The cholesterol Daily Value is 300 mg, it was not withdrawn, and %DV for cholesterol appears on current US Nutrition Facts labels. You can see it in the FDA's own Interactive Nutrition Facts Label entry for cholesterol. What changed around 2015 and 2016 was the Dietary Guidelines for Americans dropping its separate numeric 300 mg per day advice, which is a different document from the labelling rule. We conflated the two. Cholesterol is now shown as a limit like sodium, measured against 300 mg.

Why it can disagree with the package label

Nutrition labels use the FDA Daily Value. That is deliberately one number for everybody, based on a 2,000 calorie diet, so that a single printed label works for every shopper. The full set is published by the FDA at Daily Value on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts Labels.

Nutrify uses the reference intake for your specific age and sex, which is more accurate for you but will not always match the box in your hand. Iron is the clearest example. A label assumes 18 mg for everyone. The actual recommendation is 18 mg for a woman aged 19 to 50 and 8 mg for a man, so the same tin of beans will read as a very different share of the day depending on who is looking.

Neither number is wrong. They are answering slightly different questions.

A related detail: a few of the things you can track have no FDA Daily Value at all, so Nutrify never claims one for them. Caffeine is the clearest case. The 400 mg a day figure we compare against is FDA guidance for healthy adults, published in Spilling the Beans: How Much Caffeine is Too Much, not a labelling Daily Value. Fluoride and omega-3 similarly have an Adequate Intake but no Daily Value.

What Nutrify does not account for

Pregnancy and breastfeeding raise several reference intakes substantially, folate, iron and iodine especially. Nutrify does not currently ask about either, so those figures are not adjusted and will read low if they apply to you.

The reference intakes are also population guidance for healthy adults. They are not medical advice, and they do not account for a diagnosed deficiency, a medication that affects absorption, or a condition such as kidney disease where a nutrient like potassium needs to be managed carefully. If any of that applies to you, your clinician's numbers are the ones to follow.

Turning it on and choosing nutrients

1. Open Nutrify and go to Settings.
2. Tap Preferences, then Additional Nutrients.
3. Switch on the nutrients you want to follow. Each one shows what a day looks like, so you can see whether it is something to aim for or stay under before you add it.
4. Your dashboard card shows the first six. Tap See all details for the full breakdown with every reference value spelled out.

Additional Nutrients is a beta feature, so we are actively refining both the estimates and the display.

Sources

• NIH Office of Dietary Supplements: Nutrient Recommendations and Databases — the full DRI tables
• National Academies: Dietary Reference Intakes, The Essential Guide to Nutrient Requirements — how RDA, AI and upper limits differ
• FDA: Daily Value on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts Labels
• FDA Interactive Nutrition Facts Label: Cholesterol
• FDA: Spilling the Beans, How Much Caffeine is Too Much
• Dietary Guidelines for Americans — the saturated fat and alcohol figures
• NIH ODS Iron, Calcium and Potassium fact sheets

Need More Help?

If you have a question not covered here, the fastest way to reach us is directly inside the Nutrify app:

1. Open Nutrify
2. Go to Settings
3. Tap Help & Feedback
4. Tap Report a Bug or Request a Feature

Our team reads every message. You can also email us at support@nutrifytracker.com.