title: Use of Linear Programming to Develop Cost-Minimized Nutritionally Adequate Health Promoting Food Baskets.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs) are developed to promote healthier eating patterns, but increasing food prices may make healthy eating less affordable. The aim of this study was to design a range of cost-minimized nutritionally adequate health-promoting food baskets (FBs) that help prevent both micronutrient inadequacy and diet-related non-communicable diseases at lowest cost.
  
  
  METHODS
  Average prices for 312 foods were collected within the Greater Copenhagen area. The cost and nutrient content of five different cost-minimized FBs for a family of four were calculated per day using linear programming. The FBs were defined using five different constraints: cultural acceptability (CA), or dietary guidelines (DG), or nutrient recommendations (N), or cultural acceptability and nutrient recommendations (CAN), or dietary guidelines and nutrient recommendations (DGN). The variety and number of foods in each of the resulting five baskets was increased through limiting the relative share of individual foods.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The one-day version of N contained only 12 foods at the minimum cost of DKK 27 (€ 3.6). The CA, DG, and DGN were about twice of this and the CAN cost ~DKK 81 (€ 10.8). The baskets with the greater variety of foods contained from 70 (CAN) to 134 (DGN) foods and cost between DKK 60 (€ 8.1, N) and DKK 125 (€ 16.8, DGN). Ensuring that the food baskets cover both dietary guidelines and nutrient recommendations doubled the cost while cultural acceptability (CAN) tripled it.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Use of linear programming facilitates the generation of low-cost food baskets that are nutritionally adequate, health promoting, and culturally acceptable.
authors.affiliation: WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Nutrition and Health, Metropolitan University College, Copenhagen, Denmark.
authors.forename: Alexandr
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8973-3467
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Parlesak
authors.affiliation: National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Research Group for Risk-Benefit, Søborg, Denmark.
authors.forename: Inge
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Tetens
authors.affiliation: Department of Food and Resource Economics, Section for Consumption, Bioethics and Governance, Copenhagen University, Copenhagen, Denmark.
authors.forename: Jørgen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dejgård Jensen
authors.affiliation: Department of Food and Resource Economics, Section for Consumption, Bioethics and Governance, Copenhagen University, Copenhagen, Denmark.
authors.forename: Sinne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Smed
authors.affiliation: Nacionalni inštitut za javno zdravje-NIJZ (National Institute of Public Health), Ljubljana, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Mojca
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gabrijelčič Blenkuš
authors.affiliation: Nuffield Department of Population Health, British Heart Foundation Centre on Population Approaches for Non-Communicable Disease Prevention, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Mike
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rayner
authors.affiliation: The Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique 1260 INRA, the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale 1062 INSERM, Aix-Marseille University, Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR) "Nutrition, Obesity and Risk of Thrombosis", Marseille, France.
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Darmon
authors.affiliation: WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Nutrition and Health, Metropolitan University College, Copenhagen, Denmark.
authors.forename: Aileen
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Robertson
mesh_terms: D005502:Food / Q000191:economics; D017048:Health Care Costs; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000191:economics*; D009753:Nutritive Value; D011382:Programming, Linear