<p>The global food shortage has threatened the people’s well-being and social stability. Harnessing forests as a food source offers substantial potential to leveraging food availability and human health. Rising health consciousness is driving consumers’ demand for forest foods. Using data from 7,210 individuals in Liaoning Province of China, this paper explores how health consciousness influences urban residents’ consumption behavior of various forest foods. The ordered Logit model estimates show a strong positive association between health consciousness and forest food consumption behavior. Accounting for psychological motivation of determining individual’s intentions, health consciousness indirectly shapes forest food consumption through its impact on healthy consumption attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control based on the well-established theory of planned behavior (TPB). Focusing on consumers’ intention, the willingness to pay (WTP) for forest food is confirmed as a partial mediator in this relationship. Further, considering the chain mechanisms from psychological motivation to WTP, estimation results of a bootstrap chain mediating model suggest that healthy consumption attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and urban residents’ WTP for forest foods collectively exert a chained mediation effect between health consciousness and their consumption behavior toward forest foods. Given an increased public acceptance, results suggest important policy implications focusing on new proposed policies and market initiatives to boost consumption of forest foods, thereby improving the people’s well-being and ensuring food security.</p>