FinNutriAgent (FNA): An Agentic AI for Nutrition Planning Considering Budget Constraints
Received: 19 October 2025 | Revised: 21 November 2025, 29 November 2025, and 21 December 2025 | Accepted: 24 December 2025 | Online: 14 May 2026
Corresponding author: Toqeer Ali Syed
Abstract
This paper presents an agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) model that is price responsive and combines household budget constraints and dietary optimization. Based on income, fixed financial commitments, health-related requirements, and dynamically revised food expenses, the system produces meal plans that are nutritionally balanced, cost-effective, and respond automatically to market shifts. The proposed design is an implemented modular multi-agent system, which consists of specialized agents, budget planning, nutritional evaluation, price surveillance, and health-based personalization. These agents align themselves with a common body of knowledge and use food substitution graphs to maintain nutritional adequacy and to reduce spending. The assessment based on a representative household in Saudi Arabia shows 13-18% savings in food expenses in comparison to the fixed weekly menus, nutrient adequacy greater than 95%, and stability in response to simulated price shocks of ±20 - ±30%. These findings indicate that the framework is valuable to match the affordability with nutritional sufficiency and offers a scalable solution to robust household diet planning in line with the Sustainable Development Goals associated with Zero Hunger and Good Health.
Keywords:
agentic AI, household budgeting, diet optimization, nutritional adequacy, multi-agent systems, price-aware meal planning, sustainable development goalsDownloads
References
T. Brown et al., "Language Models are Few-Shot Learners," Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, vol. 33, pp. 1877–1901, 2020.
OpenAI et al., "GPT-4 Technical Report." arXiv, Mar. 04, 2024.
J. Schneider, "Generative to Agentic AI: Survey, Conceptualization, and Challenges." arXiv, Apr. 26, 2025.
J. S. Park, J. O’Brien, C. J. Cai, M. R. Morris, P. Liang, and M. S. Bernstein, "Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior," in Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, San Francisco, CA, USA, Oct. 2023.
"Agentic AI Set to Transform Customer Service & Support Landscape, Reshaping Inbound Interactions and Forcing Service Teams to Embrace Automation." Gartner. 2025.
W. A. Khan et al., "Correlating health and wellness analytics for personalized decision making," in 2015 17th International Conference on E-health Networking, Application & Services (HealthCom), Boston, MA, USA, Oct. 2015.
G. Cannon and C. Leitzmann, "Food and nutrition science: The new paradigm," Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 1–15, Mar. 2022.
"Healthy diet." World Health Organization. 2026.
P. Lips, R. T. de Jongh, and N. M. van Schoor, "Trends in Vitamin D Status Around the World," JBMR plus, vol. 5, no. 12, Dec. 2021, Art. no. e10585.
"FAO's role in nutrition." Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
L. H. Allen, "Interventions for Micronutrient Deficiency Control in Developing Countries: Past, Present and Future," The Journal of Nutrition, vol. 133, no. 11, pp. 3875S-3878S, Nov. 2003.
H. Shatila et al., "Impact of Ramadan Fasting on Dietary Intakes Among Healthy Adults: A Year-Round Comparative Study," Frontiers in Nutrition, vol. 8, Aug. 2021, Art. no. 689788.
K. H. K. Yeo, W. M. Lim, and K.-J. Yii, "Financial planning behaviour: a systematic literature review and new theory development," Journal of Financial Services Marketing, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 979–1001, 2024.
" Food Security Update | World Bank Solutions to Food Insecurity." World Bank Group.
A. Bandi, B. Kongari, R. Naguru, S. Pasnoor, and S. V. Vilipala, "The Rise of Agentic AI: A Review of Definitions, Frameworks, Architectures, Applications, Evaluation Metrics, and Challenges," Future Internet, vol. 17, no. 9, Sept. 2025, Art. no. 404.
R. R. Suryono, I. Budi, and B. Purwandari, "Challenges and Trends of Financial Technology (Fintech): A Systematic Literature Review," Information, vol. 11, no. 12, Dec. 2020, Art. no. 590.
Y. Kayikci, S. Demir, S. K. Mangla, N. Subramanian, and B. Koc, "Data-driven optimal dynamic pricing strategy for reducing perishable food waste at retailers," Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 344, Apr. 2022, Art. no. 131068.
C. R. Martell, "The impact of inflation on local government fiscal health," Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 234–252, Jan. 2024.
V. S. Nalawade, B. S. Yunnus, M. G. Shankar, C. P. Balasaheb, and T. A. Aspan, "Exploring the Role of Reinforcement Learning in Personal Finance Management: A Comprehensive Literature Survey," International Journal of Recent Advances in Engineering and Technology, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 17–21, Apr. 2025.
G. J. Stigler, "The Cost of Subsistence," Journal of Farm Economics, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 303–314, May 1945.
A. E. Babalola, B. A. Ojokoh, and J. B. Odili, "Diet Optimization Techniques: A Review," in 2020 International Conference in Mathematics, Computer Engineering and Computer Science (ICMCECS), Ayobo, Nigeria, Mar. 2020.
E. Verly-Jr, A. M. de Carvalho, D. M. L. Marchioni, and N. Darmon, "The cost of eating more sustainable diets: A nutritional and environmental diet optimisation study," Global Public Health, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 1073–1086, June 2022.
A. Rocabois, O. Tompa, F. Vieux, M. Maillot, and R. Gazan, "Diet Optimization for Sustainability: INDIGOO, an Innovative Multilevel Model Combining Individual and Population Objectives," Sustainability, vol. 14, no. 19, Oct. 2022, Art. no. 12667.
S. Acharya and S. Halder, "The price of nutrition: Can household food budgets support a healthy diet?," Asian Journal of Food Research and Nutrition, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 893–902, 2025.
S. Ben Saad and F. Choura, "Towards better interaction between salespeople and consumers: the role of virtual recommendation agent," European Journal of Marketing, vol. 57, no. 3, pp. 858–903, Feb. 2023.
R. Yang, L. Liu, and G. Feng, "An Overview of Recent Advances in Distributed Coordination of Multi-Agent Systems," Unmanned Systems, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 307–325, 2022.
J. T. Tarigan, B. Wijaya, A. C. Salim, and S. M. Hardi, "An LLM-Based Behavior Agent with Natural Language Personality Control: Enabling Trait-Driven NPC Decision-Making through Prompt Engineering," Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research, vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 26827–26832, Oct. 2025.
Y. J. Oh, J. Zhang, M.-L. Fang, and Y. Fukuoka, "A systematic review of artificial intelligence chatbots for promoting physical activity, healthy diet, and weight loss," International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, vol. 18, no. 1, Dec. 2021, Art. no. 160.
"FoodData Central." U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"Global Economic Data, Indicators, Charts & Forecasts." CEIC.
A. Akarma, "FinNutriAgent: Agentic AI for Household Nutrition and Budgeting." 2025.
Downloads
How to Cite
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Toqeer Ali Syed, Abdulaziz Alshahrani, Ali Akarma, Sohail Khan, Muhammad Nauman, It Ee Lee, Salman Jan, Ali Ullah

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain the copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) after its publication in ETASR with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
