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Sunday, April 16, 2000

Diet Power Wins RDA Race

Popular nutrition software is first to include new antioxidant allowances

DANBURY, Conn. (April 16, 2000)—Diet Power, Inc., today released a version of its personal nutrition and weight-management software incorporating the new Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) for selenium and vitamins C and E. The release came just six days after a government panel announced the changes.

"We try to act quickly when there's news affecting millions of people's health," said Diet Power founder and chairman Terry Dunkle. "Our team worked virtually round the clock." Dunkle approved the final changes at 3:15 this morning.

Version 2.4 is Diet Power's third release since January 1998, when the company unveiled the first Windows program that can guarantee reaching a goal weight on a target date. The program achieves this feat by monitoring the user's metabolic rate and showing the user how to adjust meals and activities accordingly. Besides calories eaten and burned in exercise, Diet Power keeps users aware of their intake of 33 major and minor nutrients. [Click here to learn more about Diet Power .]

The new RDAs were announced last Monday [April 10, 2000] by the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academies, which Congress chartered in 1863 to provide scientific information to the U.S. government.

The Board's report climaxed years of debate about antioxidants, compounds in food that prevent damage from oxidation in the body's cells and are thought to combat aging. People who eat antioxidant-rich foods—especially fresh fruits and vegetables—seem less prone to cancer, cardiovascular disease, cataracts, macular degeneration, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and certain complications of diabetes.

Armed with this evidence, many experts have urged people to take daily supplements of the best known antioxidants, vitamins C and E and the mineral selenium. Many have also advised taking carotenes, substances that the body converts to a fourth antioxidant, vitamin A.

Others argue that something else in these foods may be responsible for their health-promoting effects, and that taking supplements in large doses may be dangerous.

The Board's new report offered comfort to both sides. On the one hand, it raised the Recommended Dietary Allowance of vitamins C and E—almost doubling them in some categories. On the other, it identified Tolerable Upper Limits for all three; lowered the RDA for selenium in men; and refused to set allowances for carotenes, declaring that too little is known about their long-term effects.

For most adults, the report recommends:

  • Increasing vitamin C intake from 60 milligrams a day to 90 milligrams if you're male or 75 if you're female—and getting an additional 35 milligrams a day if you smoke.
  • Raising vitamin E intake to 15 milligrams or 22 International Units (IU) per day. For men, the old RDA was 10 milligrams or 13.5 IU; for women it was 8 milligrams or 10.8 IU.
  • Lowering selenium intake for men, from 70 micrograms per day to 55 micrograms per day, and leaving it at 55 micrograms for women.
  • Taking carotenes only to remedy or prevent a vitamin A deficiency.

In addition, the report set these Tolerable Upper Intake Levels:

  • For vitamin C, 2000 milligrams per day. Doses above this level can cause diarrhea.
  • For vitamin E, 1500 IU per day for people who take the natural form of the vitamin or 1100 IU per day for those who take "dl-alpha-tocopherol," a synthetic form. (The natural form, "d-alpha-tocopherol," differs in name by only one character—check the label carefully.) Higher amounts can cause hemorrhaging.
  • For selenium, 400 micrograms a day. Above this level, the mineral can trigger selenosis, which causes hair loss and nail damage.

Most important, the NRC report advised people to get their antioxidants from food, not supplements.

"That's exactly what Diet Power was invented for," said Dunkle. "The program keeps you aware of your intake of every nutrient in real time as you log your meals. You can see your levels for the past day, week, month, quarter, and year. And it automatically adjusts your daily requirements for age, sex, and reproductive status." (Requirements for teenagers and pregnant or nursing women differ from those cited above.)

Diet Power has won positive reviews (see www.dietpower.com/reviews/) in leading health and fitness magazines and journals. On the Internet, it won a 5 Star rating from the popular news service ZDNet. Reviewers praise the program for its combination of scientific rigor and user friendliness.

Diet Power comes in three forms: 1) a personal edition that can handle up to nine users within a household, 2) a large-group edition for health clubs, corporate wellness programs and the like, and 3) a consultant's edition for doctors, nutritionists, sports trainers and other personal advisers. Although it's designed for Windows, Diet Power will also run on a Mac equipped with PC-emulator software such as Virtual PC.

A free 15-day trial of the the latest version of Diet Power is available on a CD-ROM or by downloading from www.dietpower.com, where users can also order a $49.99* "unlock code" that makes the program work permanently. For further information, company contacts are at www.dietpower.com/contact_us.php.

Diet Power is not sold in stores.

On June 12, 2008, this was lowered to $39.99.

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