article · Discover Food
High-pressure acidified steaming is a processing method designed to decrease mycotoxin concentrations in cereals and legumes. To assess the safety of foods processed this way, male and female Wistar rats were fed diets containing raw or high-pressure acidified steaming processed maize and peanut flours over a 21-day period. Assessment parameters included clinical signs, body weight changes, haematological indices, serum biochemistry, organ weights, and tissue examinations of the liver and kidneys. No deaths or treatment-related clinical signs of toxicity occurred. Minor variations detected in some haematological and biochemical measures stayed within standard physiological ranges for healthy rats, with no dose-dependent patterns or tissue abnormalities. The findings show that short-term consumption of these processed flours produced no detectable toxic effects under the study conditions.
Contamination of staple foods like maize and peanuts by mycotoxins presents serious health concerns. While novel decontamination technologies can reduce toxin levels, verifying that the treatments do not introduce new chemical or biological hazards is essential. Establishing that treated flours cause no short-term adverse health outcomes provides an initial baseline of safety necessary to evaluate novel food decontamination methods.
This processing approach could eventually serve grain millers and food manufacturers seeking methods to reduce mycotoxins in cereal and legume products. The technology appears to be at an early research stage, as positive short-term animal safety data must be supplemented by extensive chronic, reproductive, and genotoxicity evaluations before industrial applications can be realised.
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High-pressure acidified steaming (HPAS) has recently been proposed as a promising processing technology for reducing mycotoxin contamination in cereals and legumes. While previous studies have demonstrated its effectiveness in decreasing parent mycotoxin concentrations, information regarding the biological safety of HPAS-treated foods remains limited. The present study therefore evaluated the short-term toxicological safety of HPAS-processed maize and peanut flours using Wistar rat models. Male and female Wistar rats were orally administered diets containing raw or HPAS-processed grain flours for 21 days. Clinical observations, body weight changes, hematological indices, serum biochemical parameters, organ weights, and histopathological examination of the liver and kidneys were used to assess potential toxicological effects. No mortality or treatment-related clinical signs of toxicity were observed throughout the study. Although statistically significant differences were detected for some hematological and biochemical parameters among treatment groups, these changes remained within physiological reference ranges reported for healthy Wistar rats and were not accompanied by consistent dose-dependent trends or histopathological abnormalities. Liver and kidney architecture remained normal across all treatment groups. These findings indicate that consumption of HPAS-treated maize and peanut flours did not produce detectable toxicological effects under the experimental conditions employed. Nevertheless, because this investigation represents a relatively short-term feeding study, additional chronic toxicity, reproductive toxicity, genotoxicity, and evaluation of possible mycotoxin transformation products are warranted before definitive conclusions regarding long-term safety and broad industrial application can be made.
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DOI: 10.1007/s44187-026-01215-1
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