A mathematical model of healthy diet menu plan for MARA Junior Science College boarding schools

Abstract

Adolescents need more attention on eating habits as they go through a critical path period of physical, physiological and psychological changes from children to adult. Therefore, planning a proper healthy diet menu is important to adolescents to have the sufficient nutrients for proper growth. However, manually plan healthy diet menu is complicated, inefficient and time-consuming. The purpose of this study is to develop a mathematical model of healthy diet menu plan that minimizes the daily fat intake and meets the necessary nutrient intake for adolescents aged 13 between 17 years old within the budget provided by Majlis Amanah Rakyat (MARA) for Malaysia adolescent in MARA Junior Science College (MJSC) boarding schools. Optimization approach and binary integer programming method were used to address the diet problem in this study. The finding of the study indicates that the developed mathematical model of healthy diet menu plan for MJSC can generate menu plan that minimizes the total fat intake at minimum level of requirement per day. This menu plan can be used as a guideline for the management of the boarding schools to provide healthy diet meals for their students.