Comprehensive nutritional, environmental, and economic assessment for 3,302 recipes in China

Dietary choices are fundamental to both human health and planetary sustainability, yet most evaluations still operate at the level of ingredients or food groups. This perspective neglects the cultural and culinary contexts that shape consumption and fails to capture the transformations induced by cooking methods. Such gaps limit our ability to assess trade-offs between nutrition, environmental sustainability, and economic affordability in ways that reflect real-world diets. China, with its rich and regionally diverse food system, provides a critical setting for advancing dish-level sustainability assessments. Our previous work established systematic profiles for Sichuan and Cantonese cuisines, but comprehensive coverage of other major culinary traditions has been lacking. The absence of such data constrains evidence-based strategies for culturally relevant dietary transitions. Here we fill this gap by compiling and standardizing a dataset of 3,302 recipes across six additional cuisines-Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Hunan, and Anhui. Each record includes detailed nutrient profiles, life-cycle environmental footprints, and market-based cost estimates, offering a robust foundation for comparative, dish-level sustainability analysis.