How much vitamin A (RAE) do you need per day?

The RDA for vitamin A is 900 mcg RAE a day for adult men and 700 mcg RAE for adult women.

These are the reference amounts used on US food labels and in dietary guidance, not personal targets. What you need shifts with age, pregnancy, medication and health conditions. The % Daily Value shown on every food page here is calculated against the FDA Daily Value for vitamin A (RAE), which is 900 µg a day.

What this means for you

Nine hundred micrograms RAE a day for men and 700 for women, and it arrives by two different routes that behave very differently.

Preformed vitamin A comes from animal foods, chiefly liver, and it counts straight towards the total. A single 3 oz portion of chicken liver carries nearly four times the daily amount, which is why liver is eaten occasionally rather than weekly.

Beta-carotene comes from plants, and the body converts it as needed. Sweet potato, carrots, pumpkin, spinach and kale supply plenty, and because the conversion is regulated, you cannot overshoot on vegetables.

Not for everyone. If you are pregnant or might become pregnant, treat vitamin A supplements and liver as questions for your doctor rather than for a shop. Preformed vitamin A above the limit, and retinoid medicines for acne, can cause birth defects.

That difference is the practical heart of this page. The upper limit of 3,000 micrograms applies to the preformed kind, not to carrots, and the harms at the top end are real: liver damage, bone problems and birth defects.

Why aiming higher than the number is a bad trade

Myth. Vitamin A supplements do not stop young children catching ordinary colds. Three trials in 22,668 children were pooled, and the number of upper respiratory infections over two weeks came out the same in both groups, a risk ratio of exactly 1.00. Certainty is low because doses and definitions differed between the trials, so what this rules out is a useful effect rather than every possible one.

Unsettled. A high intake of preformed vitamin A has been linked to broken hips. Across eight prospective studies covering 283,930 adults, the people eating the most of it had about 29 per cent more hip fractures. Beta-carotene from vegetables showed no such link. These are observational studies, so something else about those diets could explain the pattern, and the curve was U-shaped, which means low blood retinol carried risk too. Nobody has run the trial that would settle it.

Not for everyone. Going above the recommended dose has been measured in children, and it costs something. Pooling 26 randomised trials, doses higher than the WHO recommendation raised acute respiratory infections by 13 per cent. Among children who were already well nourished, the high-dose groups had 66 per cent more of them. At the recommended doses the overall figure sat on no effect, a risk ratio of 1.03. The better fed the child, the worse the trade.

Those findings point the same way. Reaching 900 or 700 micrograms is worth doing. Going past it on purpose buys nothing anyone has been able to demonstrate, and in two separate places it has a price attached.

Two large bodies of trial evidence sit behind the two halves of this nutrient. Where children are short of vitamin A, a Cochrane review of 19 trials in more than 1.2 million children found supplements cut deaths from any cause by 12 per cent on high certainty evidence. Where adults were well fed, the ATBC trial of 29,133 male smokers found beta-carotene supplements raised lung cancer risk. Same vitamin, opposite results, and the difference is who was taking it.

Why the unit looks strange

RAE stands for retinol activity equivalents, and it exists because the unit before it was too generous. RAE counts 6 micrograms of dietary beta-carotene as equal to 1 microgram of purified beta-carotene in a supplement, on the ground that dietary beta-carotene is absorbed about half as well as the older unit assumed. An old table and a new one can therefore print different vitamin A figures for the same carrot without either being wrong.

There is a plain reason the number is worth reaching at all. Too little vitamin A damages the cornea, and it remains one of the leading preventable causes of childhood blindness in the world.

Unsettled. The 3,000 microgram ceiling was reviewed again in Europe in 2024 and kept, dropping to 600 micrograms for the youngest children. For beta-carotene no upper level could be derived, because the data were not adequate to draw one. That is missing evidence rather than a safe range, and it is a separate matter from the point above about vegetables, which is about how much vitamin A your body chooses to make.

Written from the evidence cards and the data on this page, then checked back against the sources. Bioma Learn has no human medical reviewer at this time and we say so rather than invent one. Information, not medical advice. How we verify.

Foods highest in vitamin A (RAE) on this site

• Chicken, liver, all classes, cooked — 3383.8 µg per 3 oz (376% DV)
• Carrot, dehydrated — 2533 µg per 1 cup (281% DV)
• Carrot juice, canned — 2256.2 µg per 1 cup (251% DV)
• Sweet potato, cooked — 1922 µg per 1 cup (214% DV)
• Chicken, giblets, cooked, simmered — 1490 µg per 3 oz (166% DV)

All vitamin A (RAE) sources ranked →

Full guide: Vitamin A: the supplement that increased cancer in a randomised trial