Safe food is a necessity for human survival. Thus, the various types of contaminants that can be toxic such as mycotoxins should be controlled and limited. Mycotoxin contamination of food and feed, is an ongoing global concern. These fungal secondary metabolites produced as natural contaminants are toxic substances that can infect many foods and feeds and induce different diseases known as Mycotoxicosis, affecting various body organs and systems. They are produced by various species of filamentous fungi belonging to different genera, such as Penicillium, Aspergillus, Fusarium and Alternaria, that can survive under different suitable environmental conditions. Assessing the risk of mycotoxins on human and animal health requires conducting studies in which exposure assessment to individual and mixtures of mycotoxins is the main step.

Mycotoxins are fungal metabolites considered among the main natural food and feed contaminants. Food contamination is unavoidable and inevitable and once mycotoxins are present, they tend to remain as they are very stable compounds and are not easily eliminated during food processing, thus, posing a difficult challenge to food safety and food security.

The main aim of this Research Topic is to provide updated information about the risk and the exposure assessments of multi-mycotoxin incidence levels in different food products around the world. The occurrence and the dietary exposure to many mycotoxins worldwide has been evaluated in the past however, many emerging mycotoxins, such as Alternaria, have not been thoroughly assessed and are still under evaluation. Additionally, the occurrence of masked and modified mycotoxins often remain undetected by analytical methods and are the culprits for underestimated risk assessments.

The scope of this Research Topic is to present risk assessment studies of mycotoxins exposure from food and feed.
This Research Topic welcomes, but is not limited to, the following themes:
- Screening and co-occurrence of regulated and non-regulated mycotoxins in various food products.
- Exposure assessment of mycotoxins from food.
- Incidence of Alternaria mycotoxins.
- Assessment of Mycotoxins biomarkers in body fluids.
- Toxicodynamics of mycotoxins in the framework of food risk assessment.
- In-vitro digestion model in assessing the bioaccessibility of mycotoxins from food.
- The synergistic toxic effects of mycotoxins occurring simultaneously in food.
- Occurrence and exposure assessment of masked and modified mycotoxins.
- Fate of different mycotoxins during food processing.

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Frontiers in Nutrition

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