Effect of Preparation Time on the Minimum‐Cost Diet

The implications on a minimum‐cost diet of introducing meal preparation time are explored using a multiple criteria framework. Using a bicriterion method, the tradeoff between the money cost of home‐cooked meals and the meal preparation time is empirically estimated with a set of 895 recipes popular in Hawaii. There is a clear tradeoff between cost and time in preparing home‐cooked meals, and it is found that the minimum‐cost diet is very sensitive to the meal pre‐parer's value of time.