The FORESTDIET Project

The FORESTDIET (2020-2025) is funded as a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant under Grant Agreement #853222. 

AIM

Our recent research suggests that people who live in a forested landscape consume healthier foods than those who do not live near forests. But we can’t explain why!

The FORESTDIET project aims to uncover the relationships between forest cover change and people’s dietary quality in low-income countries.

Rural households in Ethiopia with a diverse dietary profile appear to have a higher proportion of forest in their surroundings than households with a more diversity dietary profile

APPROACH

We will spatially link publicly available household data on food consumption, with metrics on the proportion and spatial arrangement of forest

Also, we will zoom in on selected sites in two countries (Malawi and Tanzania) and use in-depth fieldwork to elucidate causal relations between forests and dietary outcomes locally

Geographic locations of surveyed rural households in the World Bank’s Living Standard Measurement Survey

COLLABORATORS

Assoc. Prof. Jeanine Rhemtulla, University of British Columbia

Prof. Sarah Gergel, University of British Columbia

Prof. Terry Sunderland, University of British Columbia

Prof. Tobias Kuemmerle, Humboldt University Berlin

PD Dr. Daniel Müller, Humboldt University Berlin

Dr. Amy Ickowitz, CIFOR

Asst. Prof. Bronwen Powell, Penn State

Dr. Sylvie Wood, Future Earth

Dr. Johan Oldekop, Manchester University

Asst. Prof. Suhyun Jung, West Virginia University

Dr. Gina Kennedy, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)

Prof. Rachel Bezner-Kerr, Cornell University

Prof. Rasmus Fensholt, University of Copenhagen

Dr. Martin Brandt, University of Copenhagen

Prof. Ole Mertz, University of Copenhagen