Designing healthy ice creams with linear programming: An application using traditional Portuguese products

The aim of this study was to propose a user friendly computer-aided tool based on linear programming (LP) models to design ice creams. Using this methodology, healthy ice cream can be obtained by minimizing the calorie content of the formulations subject to nutritional and technological requirements. New requirements, proposed by ice cream developers, are added to the LP models, in particular, constraints on fiber and sugar alcohol contents, fat to protein ratio, freezing point depression factor and relative sweetness. LP models for Water Ice, Milk Ice, Ice Cream, Dairy Ice, Sorbet and Artisanal Ice Cream were formulated. These models were used to produce ice creams including traditional Portuguese products (chick pea, tomato jam, apple jam, honey, carob, Azorean green, and black teas), unusual in ice cream manufacturing An optimization solver in Excel environment was applied to solve the models. The optimal blends were tested in an ice-cream pilot-plant. Practical applicationsThe use of linear programming models in ice-cream design allows a rapid examination and evaluation of all possible blend combinations and a swift determination of the best mixes in terms of calorie value. These models can be easily adapted to other objective functions (e.g. cost reduction, sensory acceptance), ingredient replacement and changes in requirement constraints. With the Solver tool from Excel, there is no need to acquire specific additional software to perform ice cream optimization. Moreover, this approach can be extended to other fields of food engineering for product development and optimization.