In recent years, the study of the generation mechanism of harmful substances in food processing has become a hot and frontier field of food safety research. Thermal processing is the most common processing method for soy products and wheat products. The protein glycation during food thermal processing will not only cause changes in protein structure, nutritional properties and functional properties, but also produce some harmful products. In heat processing, reducing sugars are mainly reactive carbonyl compounds and its will degrade during heat processing to form α-dicarbonyl compounds (α-DCs). These compounds are important intermediate products of the Maillard reaction that occurs during the heat processing. They have stronger reactivity and can undergo glycation with proteins, thereby changing its structure and nutritional properties. Currently, more and more scholars have conducted researches on the glycation effects of reducing sugars and α-DCs on proteins during food thermal processing. However, there is no literature on the glycation of plant-based proteins during the heat processing. Therefore, the structure and nutritional characteristics of soybean protein and glutenin were introduced, and the active carbonyl compounds involved in glycosylation reactions in food and their production mechanisms were analyzed. Meanwhile, the research progress of glycosylation of plant-based protein during heat processing was emphatically introduced. It will be of great significance to study the mechanism of protein modification and the mechanism of producing harmful substances in food heat processing.