The Food Bank of Madrid: A Linear Model for Optimal Nutrition

Rosendo Castañón, Fco. Alberto Campos, Salvador Doménech Martínez and José Villar
Additional contact information
Rosendo Castañón: Institute for Research in Technology IIT, ICAI, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 28015 Madrid, Spain
Fco. Alberto Campos: Institute for Research in Technology IIT, ICAI, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 28015 Madrid, Spain
Salvador Doménech Martínez: Institute for Research in Technology IIT, ICAI, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 28015 Madrid, Spain
José Villar: INESC TEC—Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 21, 1-16

Abstract: This work proposes a mathematical linear programming model that addresses the food provisioning problem of the food bank of Madrid. It aims to determine the most appropriate weekly decisions to meet the macro-nutritional requirements of the beneficiaries of this social service, by minimizing the total cost considering third-party donations. The model has been applied to a realistic case study considering a sociological structure of beneficiaries categorized by age and gender and representing the first decile of incomes of the Spanish population. The demand of macronutrients is satisfied by means of nine different groups of food, used to provide some level of variability in the consumption patterns of the beneficiaries. The results provide insight on cost-cutting opportunities related to centralizing the decision-making process, indicating a 10% reduction both in provisioning costs and food quantities. This suggests that the proposed model might serve as a tool for designing new strategies for the provisioning or evaluation of economic and social support policies for the food bank of Madrid.

Keywords: nutrition economics; resource optimization; food bank; nutrition in low-income scenarios; COVID-19 pandemic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/21/8097/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/21/8097/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:21:p:8097-:d:439299

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().