ABSTRACT
China is rich in herbs that can be used as medicine and food. The application of this kind of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as raw material is the basis for guiding the development of TCM healthcare food. TCM healthcare food has advantages in keeping in good health and reducing the risk of disease. At the same time, with the implementation of " Healthy China 2030" , it is urgent to develop a series of herbal compound healthcare food with the characteristics of TCM to meet the national and social needs. With the development of scientific research, however, there is a lack of research on the scientific evaluation of the safety of TCM healthcare food raw materials, which results in insufficient risk assessment theory and technology of healthcare food at present. Therefore, the prediction and evaluation of the toxicity of important components in this kind of raw materials has become an urgent task of food safety. Toxicology plays an important role in human health risk assessment, and its sub-disciplines have been constantly emerging. Computational toxicology, monolayer culture cell model technology, in vitro induced activity screening engineering cell technology, microfluidic chip technology and in vivo toxicology technology have become important research tools for toxicity prediction and evaluation in this field. With the rapid development of toxicology technology, food safety and human life and health can be effectively guaranteed. It will effectively promote the safety production of healthcare food industry in China and guarantee the quality and safety of terminal products. It has a great social significance, plays a positive leading role in the technological progress of the whole industry, and generates considerable economic benefits. This paper reviews recent advances and applications of new toxicological methods and models for predicting and evaluating important ingredients in TCM healthcare food raw materials.
