Abstract: Food big data technology is one of the research hotspots in the field of food science and engineering, which has great potential in many fields like food safety management, food intelligent manufacturing, and dietary nutrition and health. Based on the papers collected from the Web of Science core collection database and the patents collected from the Derwent Innovations Index database, this paper presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the current status, hotspots and future directions of research on food big data technology, as well as the comprehensive academic influence of and cooperative relationship among different countries. The results showed that remarkable achievements have been made in the application of food big data technology in the field of food safety management, which has provided a strong boost for full-chain food safety information monitoring, risk early warning, quality traceability, and so on. The application of the technology is faced with great difficulties and obstacles in the field of intelligent food manufacturing, but it shows great potential in 3D printed food research. The application in the field of dietary nutrition and health has slowly progressed and is currently still at a low level and far away from the realization of intelligent nutrition management and health intervention. While Chinese researchers have published a large number of papers concerning food big data technology, China still lags behind developed European and American countries in academic influence and cooperative relationship network. Therefore, it is urgent for the country to strengthen efforts to independently develop key technologies, as well as domestic and international cooperation and exchanges, so as to lay the foundation for the digital great-leap-forward development of China’s food industry.

Key words: food big data; bibliometrics; food safety; intelligent manufacturing; nutrition and health