A Review Presence of 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) in Food Products: Positive and Negative Impacts on Human Health

Authors: Suri PS* and Chhabra P

DOI: 10.23880/ijfsc-16000194

Volume 5, Issue 2

Abstract

In last few years, 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) has gained attention as a potential chemical to produce biofuels and biochemicals. With ongoing researches in the field of food-technology has showed the importance of HMF in beverages and alcoholic drinks. HMF is the most commonly produced industrial chemical because its production is very flexible. Despite having a long list of valuable uses in food, pharmaceutical and chemical industries, HMF has found to be in variety of negative effects on human health. This negative side of HMF is because of its thin range in the ingested amounts that bring about the toxicity to humans. The storage conditions like temperature, light, agitation and the pH of the food material consisting HMF plays a major role in the toxicity resulting from HMF. HMF is found to have role as genotoxic, mutagenic, enzyme inhibitory and organotoxic. This review aims to give a brief knowledge about the HMF production, its presence in food materials, detection techniques and effect on human health.

Keywords: Food-technology; genotoxic; mutagenic; organotoxic; anti-allergic; antioxidative; anti-inflammatory; antisickling; anti-hyperuricemic and anti-hypoxic

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