Two-stage LP diet model for Malay households

For many low income households, eating well-balanced diet can be difficult to achieve because of the high prices of food. In addressing the issue, this paper will describe how minimum-cost healthy menus for a Malay household can be generated using a two-staged linear programming (LP) model. In Stage 1, LP sub-models were formulated to generate minimum cost daily diet plans which satisfy all nutrient requirements corresponding to the 11 respective pre-determined age-gender groups. Stage 2 involves optimizing the diet plans for the whole household to determine the minimum-cost daily menus. The daily menus, which consist of food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, were selected from a database of 121 Malay food and drinks. The costs of the food are configured from the price of food purchased from outside the house. The minimum-cost healthy diet menus generated using our LP model can also be used for estimating monthly food budgets and can easily be modified to cater to all income groups.