And 16 % for men and 22 % for women consuming unrefined, cereal-based diets (WHO low

biovailability). Whether these biovailability factors are appropriate for childen, pregnant or lacting
women, or the elderly has not been established.
4.8.8 development or algorithms for the other nutrients
Research on factors affecting the biovailability of other nutrients in contemporary diets is urgently
required. So far, steps have been take to develop algorithms to quantify the biovailability of protein,
folate and vitamin a in human diets; these are considere below. Niacin is discussed in section 4.4.5
The nutrional value of proteins in diets can be estimated from a protein digestibility corred amino using
procedures of schaafsma (2000). This method is recommended by FAO/WHO (1990) and is based on
comparision of the concentration of the first limiting amino acid in a reference patern of essential amino
acids. The reference scoring pattern is derived from the essential amino acid requirements of the
preschool-age child and is given in tabel 4.16 . the chemical score derived in this way is then corrected
for true fecal digestibility of the test protein.
Some values for true fecal digestibility, amino acid score, and nontrunancated digestibility, amino acid
score from selected foods are shown in tabel 4.17. the values for proteins with PDCAAS > 100% can be
truncated to 100 % (FAO/WHO 1990). This approach has been adopted on the assumption the digestble
essentialamino acid concetrations in excess of thoe in preschool-age reference pattern do not provide
additional nutritional benefit. However, this assumption has been questioned because it does not take
into acount the ability of high-quality proteins to balance the amino acid composition of inferior
proteins. This is highly relevant because, in most cases, humans consume mixed diet containing protein
from a variety of sources, rather than singel protein source (scaafasma, 2000).
To apply this formula to habilitual mixed diets, first the observed intakes of the essential amino acid are
calculated from food compostion data. The uncorrectd amino acid score is the computed independently
for each amino acid score is then computed independently for each amino acid using the reference
amino acid pattern for childern aged 2-5 y. lastly, the lowest amino acid score is selected and applied for
the estimate of the (PDCAAS) (as %). Note that the digestib must ability of total protein intake must also
be taken into account.