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Dietary diversity

Dietary species richness for healthy people and ecosystems

Estimating food biodiversity remains a challenge due to a lack of consensus on what to measure and how. A dietary diversity index based on Hill numbers offers a simple and effective approach to account for food biodiversity in diets.

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Acknowledgements

S.A.H. is supported by the Schmidt Sciences through an Eric & Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship.

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Correspondence to Sebastian A. Heilpern.

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Heilpern, S.A. Dietary species richness for healthy people and ecosystems. Nat Food 6, 531–532 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-025-01161-8

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