Potential food safety risk factors in plant-based foods: Source, occurrence, and detection methods

In recent years, plant-based foods have been developed rapidly due to increasing concerns about the environment, human health, religious beliefs, ethics, and animal welfare. More attention should also be paid to the food safety of plant-based foods except their processing and nutrition properties. Various food safety risk factors may be introduced into plant-based foods at different stages. To ensure human health and the healthy development of emerging industries, it's significant to understand and detect the possible risk factors in plant-based foods. Herein, the potential risk factors and their detection in plant-based foods were systematically reviewed. In detail, first, the classification, source, and occurrence of the potential risk factors in plant-based foods were analyzed; second, the currently-reported detection methods and principles were introduced; finally, the existing challenges and future development tendencies were critically discussed. The potential risk factors in plant-based foods mainly include mycotoxins, pesticide residues, toxic metal elements, allergens, phytoestrogens, processing contaminants, physical foreign matters, and pathogenic bacteria, which are different from those in animal-based foods, and these risk factors have been confirmed in numerous literatures. Currently, chromatography, inductively coupled plasma, emerging sensing strategies, polymerase chain reaction, hyperspectral imaging, etc. have been applied to monitor the risk factors in plant-based foods, and satisfactory sensitivity and specificity were obtained. In the future, more work should be done in identifying, detecting, and controlling risk factors in plant-based foods, which will greatly guarantee the safe consumption and healthy market development of plant-based foods.