Fall 2010
Nutrients In A Few Varieties of Winter Squash and Compared to Pumpkin
per day
 DV1
1968
 
RDA
Adult Female
2001
RDA
Adult Male
2001
 Pumpkin
(1 cup mashed)
 Acorn
 Butternut
 Hubbard
 Spaghetti
Calories
 varies
 2100
 3400
 203
 115
 82
 102
 42
Protein, grams 50
 46
 56
2
 2
 2
 5
 1
Fiber, grams
 25
 26
 38
 3
 9
 7
 not listed
 2
MINERALS







Calcium, milligrams 1000
 1000
 1000 37
 90
 84
 35
 33
Iron, milligrams 18
 18
 8
 1.4
 2
 1
 1
 0.5
Magnesium, milligrams 400
 320
 420
 22
 88
 59
 45
 17
Potassium, milligrams 3500
 4700
 4700 564
 896
 582
 734
 181
VITAMINS







Vitamin C, milligrams 60
 75
 90
 11
 22
 31
 20
 5
Folate, mcg 400 400
 400
 22
 39 39 33 12
Vitamin A, IU
 5000
 2,333 IU
 3,000 IU
 12,230
 877
 22,900
 12,370
 170
Vitamin A, mcg RAE2
700 900 612
 43
 1144
 619
 9










1 DV (Daily Value:)  A term on food labels based on the RDA (Recommended Dietary Allowance) designed to help consumers use food label information to plan a healthy diet. A  label's Daily Value (DV) percentage is the FDA's recommended daily consumption level based on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet.  Daily Values (DV) are based on the RDA established in 1968 rather than the most recent RDA

2 OSU's Linus Pauling Institute Micronutrient Information Center page on vitamin A explains that different dietary sources of vitamin A have different potencies. For example, beta-carotene is less easily absorbed than retinol and must be converted to retinal and retinol by the body (often referred to as preformed vitamin A). Hundreds of different carotenoids are synthesized by plants, but only about 10% of them are provitamin A carotenoids.  The most recent international standard of measure for vitamin A is retinol activity equivalents (RAE), which represent vitamin A activity as retinol. Twelve mcg of beta-carotene from foods are required to provide the body with 1 mcg of retinol, giving dietary beta-carotene an RAE ratio of 12:1. Other provitamin A carotenoids in foods are less easily absorbed than beta-carotene, resulting in RAE ratios of 24:1. The RAE ratios for beta-carotene and other provitamin A carotenoids are shown in the table below (21). An older international standard, still commonly used, is the international unit (IU). One IU is equivalent to 0.3 mcg of retinol.
Regarding the bioavailabilty of carotenopids, this is an interesting abstract I read:
CAROTENOID BIOAVAILABILITY AND BIOCONVERSION,
Annual Review of Nutrition
Vol. 22: 483-504 (Volume publication date July 2002)
Kyung-Jin Yeum and Robert M. Russell of the Jean Mayer USDA-Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts
ABSTRACT
The possible role of carotenoids and their metabolites in disease prevention is far from fully understood, because the bioavailabilities of carotenoids are complicated by multiple factors that affect their absorption, breakdown, transport, and storage. Rapid progress in developing sophisticated methodologies, including use of stable-isotope dilution methods, now allows for an accurate determination of the true vitamin A activity of provitamin A carotenoids. The recent identification of specific enzymes, which catalyze the breakdown of β-carotene (β= beta) as well as nonprovitamin A carotenoids, is providing a better understanding of the functions of carotenoids at the molecular level. The pathways and possible mechanisms of carotenoid breakdown and factors affecting the bioavailability of carotenoids, such as carotenoid type, food matrix, interaction with other carotenoids and other food components, nutritional status, aging, and infection, are discussed in this review.