Abstract: Bioactive substances are essential components of foods, which play an important role in the quality of foods and the human health.Pulsed electric fields (PEF) is a non-thermal processing technology.Recently PEF technology has attracted great attention, because of its characteristic of greatly conserving nutrients in foods.The paper summarized and analyzed the effect of PEF on the bioactive substances, including the function of assisted-extraction, degradation and protection.The mechanism and influencing factors of these functions were also discussed in order to provide beneficial supports for the control of the stability of bioactive substances and the industrial development of this technology.