Abstract: The market demand is directly affected by food freshness and the post-harvest spoilage of raw fresh foods, which causes incalculable economic losses and therefore motivates the development of preservation technologies. High voltage electric field (HVEF) is a safe and environment-friendly technology for food processing. HVEF is one of the most promising technologies to preserve raw fresh foods that requires very small energy consumption with no heat effect and only a small temperature increase in the processed foods and causes little effect on the quality of the foods themselves. This manuscript outlines the basic principle of HVEF and provides a systematic elucidation of its mechanism for preserving fruits and vegetables, aquatic products and meat products with respect to membrane potential, enzyme activities and microstructure. Furthermore, future research prospects are discussed.

Key words: high voltage electric field, mechanism, fruits and vegetables, aquatic products, meat products