Abstract: Adding colorants to food is to maintain or change the color of the food,thereby increasing people's taste for food and stimulating appetite.According to psychologists'analysis,83%of the impression people receive from external information comes from visual perception,so appearance color becomes particularly important.The pleasant appearance color of food is often more easily accepted by consumers,and the selling price is also higher.This article analyzes and compares the detection standards for colorants in food,and explores the extraction methods and detector types of colorants in samples from the perspective of method principles.