Shaping the Shift to Plant-Rich Diets in China

Good Food Fund

Overview

Context: Driven by rapid urbanization, industrialized production, globalized trade, and modernized food supply chains, dietary patterns of Chinese residents are increasingly shifting toward a westernized diet. This trend has led to significant challenges, including excessive meat consumption.

Ambition: We strive to advocate for a plant-rich diet that is healthy and sustainable. Our primary focus is on residents of relatively developed urban areas, where dietary shifts are most pronounced and where awareness and accessibility can drive meaningful change. Our projects focus on transforming food environments, including institutional food services, restaurants, while also addressing consumer behaviors on purchasing fresh ingredients.

Key actors

The Good Food Fund (the first NGO in China to focus on transforming food systems)
Partner organizations in related fields
Chefs, restaurants
University food service leaders, researchers, practitioners, students
Farms and food companies that share the same value with us
Experts
Food educators
Youth change-makers

Alignment with the EAT-Lancet Commission

Our work primarily focuses on promoting the Planetary Health Diet, which is a key action identified by the EAT-Lancet Commission. Our work is also guided by China's Dietary Guidelines - this dual foundation ensures our approach is both scientifically rigorous (drawing from world-leading research) and locally relevant (grounded in national dietary standards), significantly strengthening the credibility and impact of our work.

While directly measuring dietary shifts among residents remains challenging at this stage, we track progress through: 1) Annual collection of best practice case studies demonstrating adoption of PHD principles; 2) Growing participation and engagement at our annual Good Food Summit, where stakeholders share scalable solutions.

Lessons Learned

Policy-makers and practitioners still lack a systemic understanding of food system transformation, underestimating how adopting the Planetary Health Diet could accelerate progress. While efforts like sustainable production and waste reduction exist, they rarely align strategically with dietary shifts. Additionally, policies remain disproportionately focused on production over consumption-side changes, missing critical opportunities for synergistic impact.

Next steps

Amplify public messaging: Work with media and influencers to shift consumer awareness and demand toward planetary-healthy eating.
Community-based solution: develop replicable farm-to-table models in pilot cities that enables residents to enjoy a PHD featuring ingredients sourced from eco-friendly agriculture.
Transform institutional food service: Partner with university/workplace food service leaders to drive behavior change at scale.
Enhance policy engagement: Deepen dialogue with policymakers and researchers to identify effective channels for dietary policy recommendations.

For more information contact: Huiyu Ouyang at huiyu@goodfoodchina.net

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