Food irradiation: a promising technology to produce hypoallergenic food with high quality

Abstract

The increasing incidence of food allergy cases is a public health problem of global concern. Producing hypoallergenic foods with high quality, low cost, and eco-friendly is a new trend for the food industry in the coming decades. Food irradiation, a non-thermal food processing technology, is a powerful tool to reduce the allergenicity with the above advantages. This review presents a summary of recent studies about food irradiation to reduce the allergenicity of food, including shellfish, soy, peanut, milk, tree nut, egg, wheat and fish. Principles of food irradiation, including mechanisms of allergenicity-reduction, irradiation types and characteristics, are discussed. Specific effects of food irradiation are also evaluated, involving microbial decontamination, improvement or preservation of nutritional value, harmful substances reduction of food products. Furthermore, the advantages, disadvantages and limitations of food irradiation are analyzed. It is concluded that food irradiation is a safety tool to reduce the allergenicity of food effectively, with high nutritional value and long shelf-life, making it a competitive alternative technology to traditional techniques such as heating treatments. Of note, a combination of irradiation with additional processing may be a trend for food irradiation.

Keywords:

• Allergenicity
• food allergy
• food irradiation
• food quality

Acknowledgments

This article commemorates the four years of life with my girlfriend Minghui Li. Thank Professor Fergus Clydesdale for suggestions about our manuscript.

Conflicts of interest

Authors declare no conflict of interest.

Authors’ contributions

Xiaowen Pi designed the manuscript, performed preliminary data analysis, and wrote the initial review. Professor Yili Yang proofread of the manuscripts, including grammar and content. Professor Yuxue Sun discussed with “Xiaowen Pi” and helped “Xiaowen Pi” to modify manuscripts. Professor Xibo Wang, Yin Wan, Guiming Fu, Xin Li suggested some amendments to the initial review. Professor Jianjun Cheng supervised the project and edited the final version of the manuscript.