← Cheapest meal plan optimizer
"Cheap" and "high-protein" pull in different directions, and a grocery list built by instinct usually lands on the expensive side of both. The question is a puzzle with a known answer: the minimum-cost diet problem, one of the first linear programs ever solved. Give it foods, prices and targets, and it finds the cheapest combination that meets them.
Open the free cheapest meal plan optimizer
1. Price one serving of each food. Use what you pay, and take calories, protein, carbs, fat and fibre from the label for that serving.
2. Set the targets. A calorie range, a protein minimum, fat bounds and a fibre minimum. A maximum number of servings per food keeps the plan eatable.
3. Solve. The optimizer picks servings that meet every bound at the lowest total price, then rounds to whole or half servings.
4. Read the price of each target. Re-solving with a higher protein minimum shows what each extra 10 g costs, which is usually the most useful number on the page.
Twenty starter foods at example prices, 2,000 to 2,300 calories, at least 45 g and at most 80 g of fat, at least 28 g of fibre, no food above its serving cap, half servings. Only the protein minimum changes.
| Protein minimum | Cheapest per day | Per week |
|---|---|---|
| 100 g | $1.93 | $13.51 |
| 140 g | $2.74 | $19.21 |
| 180 g | $4.38 | $30.66 |
The first 100 g come from dried lentils and beans, oats and peanut butter. Beyond that the calorie cap binds, so the plan has to buy protein in a denser form, whey, chicken or yogurt, and the price per extra gram rises. Run it on your own prices: the shape is the point, not these figures.
It knows only calories, protein, carbs, fat and fibre and the prices you typed: not vitamins, minerals, allergies, taste, pack sizes or sales. The cheapest plan is often repetitive. It is not medical or dietary advice and will not plan under 1,200 calories a day.
On the starter foods and example prices, the cheapest plan that meets 2,000 to 2,300 calories, 100 g of protein, 28 g of fibre and the fat bounds costs about $1.93 a day, built from lentils, oats, peanut butter, rice and a little oil. Your prices will differ, so edit them.
Cheap protein comes from dried beans and lentils, but they also bring a lot of carbohydrate and calories, so once the calorie cap binds the plan has to switch to denser protein such as whey, chicken or yogurt, which cost more per gram.
Yes. Paste one line per food: name, price per serving, calories, protein, carbs, fat, fibre and an optional maximum servings per day. Take the nutrition from the label for the serving you are pricing.
Next: a cheap vegan high-protein meal plan and what protein a daily food budget buys and what one more gram of protein costs.
Related: the production mix optimizer and the cut list optimizer, which solve the same kind of problem for a workshop.