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This paper aims to analyze the scientific literature produced on water use, reuse, and treatment, in the food industry during the period between 2008 and 2018. The study considered papers indexed in the Scopus and Web of Science databases, as well as Brazilian theses and dissertations. The research used content analysis to explore the corpus, which was formed by the publications' abstracts, and the Iramuteq software was used to support the analysis. The content was separated into two lexical blocks: (a) "water management," explained by the classes "water consumption indicators," "rational use of water," and "environmental management;" and (b) "wastewater management," explained by the "fluent management" and "measurement and monitoring." The study pointed to four emergent research opportunities on the theme: "water conservation; "" Water reuse; " "New productive standards," and "empirical studies." The main results show a high interest of Chinese, Indian, and European researchers in water management in all cycles of use, and scarce studies in highly industrialized countries with a strong projection of water stress, such as the USA, Japan, and Russia. Also, it is possible to observe that there is a growing interest in this subject due to the projection of water stress in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]