ABSTRACT
In the developing world, vitamin A deciency is a major health problem and responsible for blindness and increased childhood mortality before the age of 5 due to a weakened immune system. The reason for vitamin A deciency in developing countries is the inadequacy of the diet, while, in contrary, in developed countries, it is often claimed that vitamin A intake is too high and might cause harmful effects. The range of foods available in these countries is wider than ever, but changing lifestyles and dietary habits can signicantly impact on intakes of various micronutrients, leading to inadequate intakes even in afuent societies [1]. Obtaining accurate information on dietary intakes of whole populations remains a challenge. However, dietary surveys, despite their well-known limitations, are considered as an established tool to do so. To assess and compare the current vitamin A intakes in industrialized countries, large population-based surveys from Germany [2], the United Kingdom [3], the Netherlands [4], and the United States [5-7] were selected. While the rst three are published surveys, the data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey can be downloaded and analyzed. For this, we employed the Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies (Version 2.0 for NHANES 2003-2004, version 3.0 for 2005-2006, and version 4.0 for 2007-2008) to determine the vitamin content of foods. Intake data from the two 24 h recalls were used to estimate percentiles using the National Cancer Institute method [8].
