Research progress in the application of emerging technology for reducing food allergens as a global health concern: A systematic review

Abstract

Since the turn of the century, innovative food processing techniques have quickly risen to the top of the commercial and economic prominence food industry’s priority list due to their many benefits over more conventional approaches. Compared to traditional food processing techniques, these innovative procedures retain better the distinctive aspects of food, including its organoleptic and nutritional attributes. Concurrently, there has been a discernible increase in the number of people, particularly infants and young children, who are allergic to certain foods. Although this is widely associated with shifting economic conditions in industrialized and developing countries, the rise of urbanization, the introduction of new eating patterns, and developments in food processing, it still needs to be determined how exactly these factors play a part. Under this circumstance, given the widespread presence of allergens that cause IgE-mediated reactions, it is critical to understand how the structural changes in protein as food is processed to determine whether the specific processing technique (conventional and novel) will be appropriate. This article discusses the impact of processing on protein structure and allergenicity and the implications of current research and methodologies for developing a platform to study future pathways to decrease or eliminate allergenicity in the general population.

Keywords:

• Food allergens
• allergenicity
• emerging technology
• non-thermal processing
• allergy

Authors’ contributions

Conceptualization, A.M.K, and A.N.; investigation, formal analysis, data curation, methodology, Z.A.; writing—original draft preparation, F.J, M.D, A.A and pm; writing—review and editing, A.M.K and A.N; validation, resources, supervision, visualization, F.J., K.M and A.M.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Data availability statement

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.