Maggie Stewart loves desserts, but due to weight and cholesterol concerns, she has decided that she must plan her desserts carefully. There are two possible desserts she is considering: snack bars and ice cream. After reading the nutrition labels on the snack bar and ice cream packages, she learns that each serving of a snack bar weighs 37 grams and contains 120 calories and 5 grams of fat. Each serving of ice cream weighs 65 grams and contains 160 calories and 10 grams of fat. Maggie will allow herself no more than 450 calories and 25 grams of fat in her daily desserts, but because she loves desserts so much, she requires at least 120 grams of dessert per day. Also, she assigns a “taste index” to each gram of each dessert, where 0 is the lowest and 100 is the highest. She assigns a taste index of 95 to ice cream and 85 to snack bars.
a. Use Solver to find the daily dessert plan that stays within her constraints and maximizes the total taste index of her dessert.
b. Confirm graphically that the solution from part a maximizes Maggie’s total taste index.
c. Use a two-way Solver table to see how the optimal dessert plan varies when the calories per snack bar and per ice cream vary. Let the former vary from 80 to 200 in increments of 10, and let the latter vary from 120 to 300 in increments of 10.