The global prevalence of liver diseases is continuously on the rise, with alcoholic liver disease, metabolic-related fatty liver disease, autoimmune liver disease, drug-induced liver injury, and liver fibrosis/cirrhosis becoming prominent public health issues. Traditional chemical drugs have significant side effects and act on a single target, while food-medicine homologous substances, which are widely available and have high safety, demonstrate unique value in the prevention and treatment of various liver diseases due to their multi-component synergistic effects. This review summarizes the protective effects of food-medicine homologous substances from plants, animals and fungi on various liver injury models with a focus on their synergistic effects. Based on the pathological process of liver injury, this article reconstructs the mechanism system and elaborates on the characteristics of cross-talk and synergistic enhancement among components and pathways. It also discusses the current challenges for the applications of food-medicine homologous substances. This review aims to provide a scientific basis for the collaborative development of food-medicine homologous substances and natural intervention strategies for liver diseases and to offer references for innovative research in the fields of food therapy, medicine, and health care.

In recent years, with the increasing attention paid to the nutrition and functions of food, the demand for visual evaluation technologies for food and its nutritional components has become increasingly urgent. Zebrafish, with its advantages such as small size, fast reproduction rate, high homology with human genes, easy breeding and observation, has been widely applied as an animal model for the visual evaluation of food and its nutritional components. This review systematically discusses the application of zebrafish in the visual functional evaluation of food in multiple fields including cardiovascular protection, liver protection, neuroprotection, regulation of bone development, immune enhancement, anti-inflammatory effect, antioxidant effect, regulation of glucose metabolism, and skin beautification. Meanwhile, it outlines the application of cutting-edge multidisciplinary technologies such as gene editing, high-throughput screening and big data analysis in the functional evaluation of foods using zebrafish, and discusses future prospects for zebrafish in the functional evaluation of food and its nutritional components.