<b>Dataset-The Past and Future of Food from Forest in</b><b> China</b>

Food security issues arising from hunger and unscientific diets are threatening the realization of the overarching goal of sustainable development in many countries. When food from traditionally cultivated land is not sufficient to meet demand, food from forests will be able to effectively supplement it. Here we examine the development and spatial and temporal evolution of forest food in China over the past fifteen years (2006-2020), based mainly on empirical evidence from China, while measuring the number of people that forest food can feed and the amount of agricultural carbon emissions it replaces. According to our results, most of China's forest food is distributed in collective forest areas, and its share in major agricultural products is increasing year by year, approaching 10% in 2020. Under our given five SSPs scenarios, the SSP1 scenario has the most forest food equivalents in 2050, while the demand-side data of forest food measured based on the population data calculated by the cohort factor method is matched with the supply-side data of the previous projections to obtain the highest number of males, females, and the average population that can be fed under the SSP1 scenario, which is close to the SSP2 scenario. The proportion of agricultural carbon emissions that can be replaced in the SSP1 scenario also increases over the years, with clear environmental benefits. Finally, the ability to drive forest food growth obtained in structural equation modeling depends on factors such as economic level, population size and technological innovation.