Another update on the original diet problem

Yesterday I did a quick cost update on Stigler's 1939 minimum cost diet recommendation (it was published in 1945 but based on 1939 prices).

An update of his study was published in 2002 (based on 1998 prices). Written by Susan Garner Garille and Saul I Gass it appeared as "Stigler's Diet Problem Revisited" in Operations Research, Jan 2001.

A review of the article is here.

The researchers updated the original data to reflect price changes, revised values of the RDA's, and current evaluations of the nutrient content of the 77 foods chosen by Stigler. The updated problem shows that the optimal solution diet for a 25-50 year old man consists, on a daily basis, of 1.31 cups of wheat flour, 1.32 cups of rolled oats, 16 fluid ounces of milk, 3.86 tablespoons of peanut butter, 7.28 tablespoons of lard, 0.0108 ounces of beef liver, 1.77 bananas, 0.0824 of an orange, 0.707 cup of shredded cabbage, 0.314 of a carrot, 0.387 of a potato, and 0.53 cup of pork and beans. The daily cost of this diet is $1.78.

These costs are actually higher than the estimates I made yesterday for the Stigler diet. But they updated the model with more restrictions than in the original model, which would tend to cause an increase in minimum cost.

Both diets provides servings from all six food groups established by the USDA: 1) fats, oils, and sweets group; 2) milk group; 3) meats and beans group; 4) vegetable group; 5) fruit group; and 6) grain product group.