Greedytilnæring

Greedytilnæring is a term used in nutrition informatics to describe a heuristic approach to planning diets by greedily selecting foods to satisfy predefined nutrient targets. The term blends the English word greedy with the Norwegian concept of tilnæring, here used to denote nutrition or nutritional planning. In practice, greedytilnæring functions as a heuristic rather than an exact optimization, and is typically contrasted with formal optimization methods that guarantee global optimality. The concept is not widely standardized in peer‑reviewed nutrition literature, but may appear in interdisciplinary discussions of diet optimization and software tools.

Methodology for greedytilnæring generally starts with daily nutrient targets, including calories, macronutrients, vitamins, and minerals. A database or list of foods with nutrient profiles and, often, costs, is prepared. At each step, the food item that best reduces the remaining unmet need according to a chosen criterion is added—commonly the item with the highest ratio of unmet nutrient per serving or the lowest cost per unit of a key nutrient. The process repeats until all targets are met or a practical stopping condition is reached, with additional rules to ensure dietary variety, limit servings, and respect dietary restrictions. The result is a feasible diet that is typically computationally efficient but may be suboptimal.

Applications of greedytilnæring appear in rapid meal-planning tools, educational software, and initial stages of diet-design research. Limitations include potential lack of variety, inadequate satisfaction, sensitivity to input data quality, and difficulty capturing nutrient interactions. It serves as a practical heuristic within the broader landscape of diet optimization, alongside exact methods such as linear or integer programming that can provide guarantees of optimality under defined constraints.