[KUJustin]

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By "scalable," do you mean the solution steps increase in polynomial time with increasing number of categories and items per category?

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yes

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Also, can we make the following assumption:

Given any two items X and Y within a group, does

carlories(X) >= calories(Y) imply price(X) >= price(Y)?

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no

Given that this is "np-hard" is there a better solution for approximating than the one I've given? I'm going to research this based on the links and problem name provided, but if anyone has some more insight I'm obviously interested.