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DOI: 10.1111/nbu.12076
Mixt Research Unit Nutrition Obesity and Thrombotic Risk, Aix-Marseille University, France;
Department of Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK;
Summary
With the global population expected to increase to 9 billion by 2050 coupled with
concerns about food security in relation to climate change and increasing prosperity
in many parts of the world causing desire for a less monotonous diet, efficient use
of resources such as food becomes ever more important. While the prevalence of
obesity is a cause for concern in many parts of the world, many people still go to
bed hungry, and in many communities, obesity co-exists with poor diet quality. The
result is a series of complex and challenging nutrition problems, such as the access
to nutritionally adequate and affordable diets and the development of dietary
recommendations. Diet modelling is a useful tool to help identify solutions to such
complex questions and this paper summarises a session on this topic at the International Congress of Nutrition that took place in September 2013.
Keywords: diet modelling, linear programming, nutrition, public health
Introduction
This paper summarises a series of presentations in a
session focusing upon diet modelling, sponsored by
Danone Nutricia Research,1 from the International
Congress of Nutrition that took place in Granada
(Spain) in September 2013. The session was introduced
by Dr Anne Lluch from Danone Nutricia Research and
chaired by Dr Andr Briend who also gave an introduction to the history of mathematical modelling of diets.
115
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J. L. Buttriss et al.
Food type
Meat and meat
products
Fish and fish dishes
Milk and milk products
Diet modelling
security perspective and could also be used to help identify sustainable food systems. But, first, what is the
history of mathematical modelling of diets?
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J. L. Buttriss et al.
ated with this should not be underestimated. The challenge is to obtain intake distributions for each food that
are realistic and also capable of resulting in an overall
energy intake that is consistent with the observed energy
intake distribution in the population. This is difficult to
achieve because individuals adjust their total energy
intake over time, meaning that intakes of individual
foods are not independent of one another. Randomly
assigning an intake to each food within observed limits,
without taking this complex regulation of food consumption into account, will result in unrealistically high
variability in energy intake.
The remaining sections of this article discuss how
linear programming can add value in a public health
context and provide examples of how linear programming can be used in a variety of public health settings to
establish practical and nutritionally robust food-based
dietary guidelines (FBDGs).
Diet modelling
125
45
Vitamin C
7
6.5
6
Vitamin C (mg/day)
7.5
100
% Lipids
75
40
35
50
Energy density
30
8.5
8
119
5.5
5
25
Diet affordability
A particular example of the strength of linear programming for analysing the relationships between different
dimensions is its role in the study of diet affordability, a
paramount question both in public health nutrition and
in the diet sustainability field. In the USA, the USDA
(United States Department of Agriculture) has been
applying diet modelling since 1975 to generate balanced, cheap menus: the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP)
(Carlson et al. 2007). A French study has combined diet
modelling and nutrient profiling approaches to identify
foods with a very good nutritional quality/price ratio
(i.e. the foods that should be preferentially selected to
provide a healthy diet on a low food budget) (Maillot
et al. 2008).
Other applications
Besides the classical application of diet modelling for
designing low-cost nutritious diets, linear programming
has also been used to explore the causal link between the
nutritional quality of diets and their cost. Using a model
where all the nutritional constraints (except energy)
were replaced by social acceptability constraints,
25
Mean pop.
diet
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J. L. Buttriss et al.
Diet modelling
0.07 $/day
Figure 2 Comparison of how well food-based
recommendations ensure diet adequacy.
FBR = food-based recommendations.
None no recommendations.
4 FBR dairy 21 servings/week; vegetables 21
servings/week; meat-fish-eggs 5 servings/week;
legumes 7 servings/week.
7 FBR dairy 21 servings/week; vegetables 21
servings/week; green leafy vegetables 7 servings/
week; meat-fish-eggs 5 servings/week; fish 3
servings/week; legumes 7 servings/week; fortified
cereal 7 servings/week..
0.22 $/day
0.24 $/day
120
121
Ca
Vit C
100
Vit A
B1
80
B2
60
B3
40
Folate
20
B12
Fe
None
4 FBR
7 FBR
Zn
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J. L. Buttriss et al.
Diet modelling
Observed diets
123
Optimised diets
Class 4
Class 4
22 %
32 %
Class 1
51 %
Class 1
7%
Class 3
10 %
9%
Class 3
Figure 3 Relative contributions of each
nutrient profiling class to total diet weight
among the observed and optimised diets.
61 %
Class 2
8%
Class 2
Conclusions
In summing up the presentations and associated discussion, the chairman of the session, Dr Andr Briend,
made some observations about the limitations of linear
programming. The first limitation of linear program-
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