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• Urban food forestry initiatives in Brazil are quite recent and focus on tree planting. • Brazilian Urban Forestry Master Plans generally do not consider food production. • Science-based, participatory debates led to more robust policies on urban forestry. • A case study showed the great potential of urban forests to improve food security. • There are still many challenges to advance urban food forestry in Brazil. Urban forests play an important role for urban dwellers, providing environmental, social and economic services. One of these benefits is the capacity of trees to provide food, an aspect which as the potential to increase food security that has been gaining increasing attention over the past few years. However, there is currently limited information about urban food forests in Brazil. The present study aims to provide an overview of urban food forestry (UFF) in the country evaluating different aspects. Thirty different initiatives were analysed, and the stakeholders and activities involved in the initiatives were evaluated. Moreover, 58 Urban Forestry Master Plans (UFMPs) were analysed, in order to evaluate whether the municipalities considered food production from urban trees. Most of the analysed initiatives (79 %) include activities related to fruit tree planting in the city, being the municipalities (79 %) the main responsible for such initiatives. Regarding the UFMPs, only 12 municipalities (i.e. 24 %) considered human food consumption from urban fruit trees. In order to quantify the food production potential from urban trees in a municipality with high vulnerability to food insecurity, a detailed study with 3 different scenarios was carried out in Uchoa, São Paulo. Trees located on Uchoa's streets would have the capacity to provide up to 63.7 % of the caloric deficit of the municipality in the best scenario. These findings demonstrate the potential of UFF to tackle food insecurity and highlight the need of a better reflection of this approach in public policies, such as UFMPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]