Application prospect of traditional Chinese medicine network pharmacology in food science research.

In-depth research on the mechanism of food nutrition and bioactivity has always been a shortcoming. The main function of the food itself is to meet the nutritional needs of the human body, not the therapeutic effect. Therefore, its relatively modest biological activity makes it difficult to study in general pharmacological models. With the popularity of functional foods and the concept of dietary therapy, the development of information and multi-omics technology in food research, the mechanism research of food is also moving towards a more microscopic future. Network pharmacology has accumulated nearly 20 years of experience in the research of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), among which there is no lack of TCMs for both medicinal and edible purposes. Based on the similarity in the "multi-component-multi-target" properties of food and TCM, we think that network pharmacology is applicable to the study of the complex mechanism of food. In this review, we review the development of network pharmacology, summarize its application in "medicine and food homology", and proposal the methodology based on food characteristics for the first time, thereby demonstrating its feasibility in food research. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.