What Role Can Artificial Intelligence Play in Food Chemistry?

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A recent review published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition reported how artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping how food chemists analyze composition, quality, and safety.¹ The findings in this report have several implications for research laboratories and industrial food production. The article, authored by Yongchao Yao, Xuping Sun, and Walter Hu of Sichuan University, synthesizes recent peer-reviewed studies showing how AI is being integrated with established analytical techniques across food chemistry.¹

Food analysis is a growing application in spectroscopy, with numerous non-destructive techniques being used in this area.² This review article explored how these techniques are being integrated with machine learning (ML) and AI approaches to improve analytical accuracy and efficiency. According to the authors, these hybrid workflows are moving food analysis beyond traditional, labor-intensive methods toward data-driven systems capable of faster interpretation and more nuanced pattern recognition.¹

“This integration leads to significant advances in various domains, including the analysis and content prediction of bioactive constituents, sensory and flavor assessment, shelf-life prediction, detection of harmful ingredients and contaminants, quality control and adulteration detection, nutritional analysis, variety identification and origin analysis, as well as the screening and design of new ingredients,” the authors wrote in their study.¹

In their review article, the authors highlight that in spectroscopic and chromatographic analyses, AI models are shown to reduce analysis time while extracting more chemical information from complex data sets.¹ Similar gains are reported for mass spectrometry, where AI supports compound identification and classification in increasingly large and diverse data sets.¹

Beyond quality control, the review points to growing use of AI in sensory and flavor analysis, nutritional profiling, and the identification of food variety and geographic origin. These capabilities are particularly relevant for manufacturers and regulators facing tighter safety standards and increasing demand for traceability.¹ The authors also discuss emerging work on AI-assisted screening and design of new food ingredients, suggesting a role for computational tools in product development.¹

Rather than presenting new experimental results, the review’s contribution lies in consolidating evidence that AI is becoming a practical extension of conventional food chemistry methods. The authors argue that continued integration of AI with analytical instrumentation could change how food systems are monitored and optimized, provided challenges related to data quality, model interpretability, and standardization are addressed.¹

References

1. Gu, C.; Wang, G.; Zhuang, W. et al. Artificial Intelligence-enabled Analysis Methods and their Applications in Food Chemistry. Crit. Rev. Food Sci. Nutr. 2026, 66 (1), 206–227. DOI: 10.1080/10408398.2025.2521648
2. Wetzel, W.; Workman, Jr., J. Spectroscopy Solutions for Honey Authentication. Spectroscopy. Available at: https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/view/spectroscopy-solutions-for-honey-authentication (accessed 2026-02-04).