In summary, Pennington (1998) estimated that the daily nitrate
intake ranges between 53 and 350 mg/day depending on the type
and quantity of the vegetable consumed and the level of nitrate in
drinking water. Whereas daily nitrite consumption was between 0
and 20 mg/day depending on the levels of nitrite present in cured
meat and much of it was consumed. The acceptable daily intake
(ADI) for nitrate was set at 3.7 mg/kg body weight by the European
Union Scientific Committee for Food (1995) and since nitrite has
higher acute toxicity than nitrate its ADI was set at 0.06 mg/kg
body weight (Reinik et al., 2005).