Daily Value (DV)

The Daily Value (DV) is the FDA's per-nutrient reference intake used to contextualise Nutrition Facts panel figures. A label that reports "Sodium 320 mg, 14% DV" is asserting that 320 mg of sodium is 14 per cent of the Daily Value for sodium, which the FDA sets at 2,300 mg. The DV concept gives a consumer a way to read "320 mg" as "moderate" or "large" relative to a regulatory reference, without requiring the consumer to know the reference in absolute terms.

Where the numbers come from

Daily Values are derived from, but not identical to, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs). DRIs are a family of figures — Recommended Dietary Allowance, Adequate Intake, Tolerable Upper Intake Level, and Estimated Average Requirement — that vary by age, sex, and life-stage. The FDA collapses this family into a single figure per nutrient for labelling, typically chosen as the highest RDA across life-stages for essential nutrients and the AMDR or a public-health-motivated level for macronutrients and problem nutrients (sodium, saturated fat, added sugars).

For some older nutrients, the DV still traces back to the 1968 Reference Daily Intake framework — a pre-DRI construct. The FDA has been bringing these into line with current DRI science over successive label revisions; the 2016 revision updated most figures but left a few (biotin, molybdenum, chromium) on older bases.

The 2016 DV revisions

The 2016 Nutrition Facts revision updated the Daily Values for most nutrients and added four new DVs: added sugars (50 g, a new public-health-motivated ceiling), vitamin D (20 µg, reflecting the 2011 DRI revision), potassium (4,700 mg, up from the previous implicit reference), and choline (550 mg). The calcium DV changed from 1,000 to 1,300 mg. Sodium remained at 2,300 mg. Saturated fat remained at 20 g. The explicit targets for "problem" nutrients — sodium, saturated fat, added sugars — are set at consumption ceilings, not at recommended intakes; a consumer who hits 100 per cent DV of these is at the regulatory limit, not at a target.

%DV is not personalised

The Daily Value is a single reference for a notional adult eating 2,000 kcal per day. A 2,400-kcal athlete and a 1,500-kcal older adult with lower requirements are both reading a percentage against the same adult reference. This is a known consumer-education gap; the FDA's Interactive Nutrition Facts Label resource attempts to address it, but the label itself does not vary. Consumer tracking apps that sum %DV across a day's intake are summing a ratio against a reference that was never personalised to the tracker.

Class I vs Class II for label compliance

The distinction between Class I and Class II nutrients on FDA tolerance bands maps approximately to whether a DV exists as a target (Class I, added/fortified — the product is making a positive nutrition claim) or as a ceiling (Class II, naturally occurring — the product must not understate the less-desirable nutrients). This is why sodium, saturated fat, and sugars are held to tighter upper-bound tolerance than calcium or vitamin D.