Healthy menu planning in a higher education institution

Mass nutrition supports the balanced nutrition processes of individuals in common living spaces such as schools, hospitals and workplacesIt is also an effective tool for public policies aiming to regulate public health. The process of mass nutrition is planned in detail in the publicly available guide that makes this tool functional. The main motivation of this study is the lack of a systematic approach to prepare a menu plan that satisfies the main stakeholders of the mass nutrition process: the institution, service providers and beneficiaries. This study addresses the problem of menu planning in a university cafeteria that satisfies the interests of the institution, service provider and beneficiary. The menu planning problem defined within the framework of the university's tender specifications is solved with a mathematical model that can prepare cost-oriented, taste-oriented or balanced menus, has a memory feature and can take into account seasonal effects. The proposed model provides a structure that can maximize the satisfaction of stakeholders by allowing the decision maker to prepare menu plans by adopting different policies in different time periods. In the study, the model's features and basic expectations are tested and its applicability is verified. In addition, the effects of the policy parameter that allows the preparation of taste and cost-oriented menus on the menu plan performance parameters of average taste and cost scores are examined.