Linear Programming Model Applied to the Optimization of Nutritional Diets for Athletes

Abstract

The present work fulfills the objective of providing a tool of computer technology to the service of the personal health, an optimized diet in function of costs and quantities by rations that must be consumed to fulfill the diet in a high performance sportsman, caloric requirements in function of the type of physical activity. The method used consisted of taking a sample of athletes who maintain a regular training regime of four hours a day; the results include the application of the Linear Programming Model of Operations Research, which is a mathematical matrix model of deterministic type for the optimization of resources at minimum cost, with maximum utility. This model was applied to the formulation of mix or optimization of the nutritional diet for athletes, generating an optimal nutritional formulation that meets the technical specifications and minimum, maximum or fixed nutritional requirements (restrictions = rows). These nutritional requirements must be compared or met from the mixture or combination of a certain number of available food ingredients or inputs (decision variables = columns) that in turn possess or contribute to the mixture formula with their respective technical characteristics, contents and nutritional inputs. This matrix structuring of the model and its corresponding processing using the so-called Simplex Method, allows to obtain an optimal nutritional diet for athletes, taking also as a sample, the formulation of the optimal diet for breakfast, by virtue of the multiple possibilities of daily formulation for the athlete. Subsequently, the results are obtained and displayed through the link with a software and Linear Programming application used for the optimization of the diet, using online tools that give reliable results, which in turn are analyzed and validated prior to implementation.