Plant-based nutritional and healthy foods have been the future directions in future food industry as well as an important demand of national healthy diet. To develop plant-based nutritional and healthy foods， it is necessary to understand the formation and evolution of the cross-scale structure of food soft matter during processing and the related influence on functions and properties. Based on elucidating the cross-scale structural characteristics of the nutritional and healthy food， the creation pathway and the regulation mechanism of texture characteristics of plant-based nutritional and healthy food products were further analyzed. According to the principle and application of extrusion processing technology， the research advances of the effect on the starch/ plant protein complexes during extrusion processing were demonstrated， which included the formation and evolution rules of cross-scale structure of the complexes and their texture characteristics. The important basic scientific problems and the future outlooks in the exploration of related research areas were also pointed out， which were aimed to provide guideline for improving the quality of plant-based nutritional and healthy foods and promoting the food industry development in a comprehensive manner.