American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol 27, 1182-1193, Copyright © 1974 by The American Society for Clinical Nutrition, Inc.

Status of human requirements for vitamin E

¹ From the Department of Biochemistry, St. Louis University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, 63104

The development of adult requirements for vitamin E is reviewed. The unusual range of the requirement for the tocopherols which depends so much on past and present dietary habits makes it difficult to fix on a single figure for use in composite tables of nutritional requirements. Attempts to relate the requirement to the amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) in the diet only has many disadvantages. To allow for synthesis and selective storage of PUFA in tissue lipids even when the diet is very low in such lipids, a base-line figure for tocopherol needs is suggested to which the additional requirements for PUFA in the diet are added in order to obtain the requirement. Evaluation of long-term accumulations of linoleic acid in depot fat of adult men on different diets indicates that one should probably consider the percentage of PUFA in the dietary fat separately from the total amount of PUFA consumed. Accordingly, it is suggested that in calculating the requirement for vitamin E, equal weight be given to estimations of the percentage of PUFA in the dietary fats and to the amount of PUFA in the diet. The result of such a calculation is then added to the basal figure to obtain the total daily requirement. The formula used to calculate the tocopherol equivalent required per day is 0.25(% PUFA + g PUFA) + 4 = d--tocopherol equivalent (mg).