What does the government base their Daily Recommended Value (DRV) on?

The vitamins are a different story. Contrary to what most believe, your DRVs for vitamins have nothing to do with your health. They are not the amounts to take to be healthy. These are what is known as minimal amounts for survival. Each vitamin has its own unique history. For example, Vitamin C is the most widely known because of its role in scurvy. The RDA for Vitamin C of 60mg is the minimum amount you would need to avoid scurvy. So even though there is plenty of research to suggest you could avoid a number of other conditions, improve recovery, possibly lower cholesterol, etc, with substantially higher doeses, you will see things based on the minimum amount for this one disease. Vitamin D is similar. Vitamin D is not recommended for your optimal health, because studies show more Vitamin D than the DRV can be very healthy. Vitamin D is based on the minimum amount for survival - basically, the minimum amount it takes to avoid a case of rickets.

Have you heard of anyone with scurvy? Or ricketts? Nope - the DRVs work. They do their job. They help us survive scurvy and ricketts. However, we see tons of other degenerative diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc. These have been shown to have a direct correlation with nutrient intake - the Journal of the American Medical Association linked the second major cause of death in the US in 2002 to poor diet and lack of exercise. Poor diet includes improper nutrition, ergo supplementation.

For example, I know a lot of people who say, "I'm doing fine - I easily get 100% of my DRV". What they are saying is "I'm doing fine - I get the minimum amount for survival".

What is optimal is highly debated, but there are some common trends that are published in medical journals that can help form a baseline trend and I can tell you it is well over what the DRVs are!