science

Stigler diet

Stigler diet is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Stigler diet rather than just read about it. In short: The Stigler diet is an optimization problem named for George Stigler, a 1982 Nobel laureate in economics, who posed the following problem:For a moderately active man weighing 154 pounds, how much of each of 77 foods should be eaten on a daily basis so that the man’s intake of nine nutrients will be at least equal to the recommended dietary allowances (RDAs) suggested by the National Research Council in 1943, with th…

Key takeaways

Stigler diet belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Stigler diet to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Stigler diet from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Stigler diet is an optimization problem named for George Stigler, a 1982 Nobel laureate in economics, who posed the following problem:For a moderately active man weighing 154 pounds, how much of each of 77 foods should be eaten on a daily basis so that the man’s intake of nine nutrients will be at least equal to the recommended dietary allowances (RDAs) suggested by the National Research Council in 1943, with the cost of the diet being minimal? The nutrient RDAs required to be met in Stigler's experiment were calories, protein, calcium, iron, as well as vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, and C. The result was an annual budget allocated to foods such as evaporated milk, cabbage, dried navy beans, and beef liver at a cost of approximately $0.11 a day in 1939 U.S. dollars. While the name "Stigler Diet" was applied after the experiment by outsiders, according to Stigler, "No one recommends these diets for anyone, let alone everyone." The Stigler diet has been much ridiculed for its lack of variety and palatability; however, his methodology has received praise and is considered to be some of the earliest work in linear programming.

Linear programming problem The Stigler diet question is a linear programming problem. Lacking any sophisticated method of solving such a problem, Stigler was forced to utilize heuristic methods in order to find a solution. The diet question originally asked in what quantities a 154-pound (70 kg) male would have to consume 77 different foods in order to fulfill the recommended intake of 9 different nutrients while keeping expenses at a minimum. Through "trial and error, mathematical insight and agility," Stigler was able to eliminate 62 of the foods from the original 77 (these foods were removed because they lacked nutrients in comparison to the remaining 15). From the reduced list, Stigler calculated the required amounts of each of the remaining 15 foods to arrive at a cost-minimizing solution to his question. According to Stigler's calculations, the annual cost of his solution was $39.93 in 1939 dollars (equivalent to $924 in 2025, or $2 per day, slightly under the international poverty line as housing, clothing and fuel are also needed to live). The specific combination of foods and quantities is as follows:

The 9 nutrients that Stigler's diet took into consideration and their respective recommended daily amounts were:

Seven years after Stigler made his initial estimates, the development of George Dantzig's simplex algorithm made it possible to solve the problem without relying on heuristic methods. The exact value was determined to be $39.69 (using the original 1939 data). Dantzig's algorithm describes a method of traversing the vertices of a polytope of N+1 dimensions in order to find the optimal solution to a specific situation. In 2014, Google chef Anthony Marco devised a recipe using a similar list of ingredients (with calf liver in place of evaporated milk), called "Foie Linéaire à la Stigler"; one Google employee described it as "delicious".

References

External links The Cost of Subsistence by George Stigler (fulltext) "The Diet Problem" by George Dantzig

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Stigler diet

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Stigler diet claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Stigler diet before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Stigler diet ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Stigler diet

In research: Stigler diet appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Stigler diet in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Stigler diet is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Human nutrition, Linear programming, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Stigler diet outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Stigler diet in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Stigler diet means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Stigler diet out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Stigler diet in simple terms?

Why does Stigler diet matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Stigler diet?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Stigler diet.