Abstract: This article focused on the research progress of heavy metal's sample preparation and testing methods in food additive. The main sample preparation methods contained:dry digestion,wet digestion,microwave digestion,solvent extraction and so on. Dry digestion and wet digestion were both time and sample consuming.Microwave digestion was widely used in the test due to its convenient,fast,little interference. Heavy metal's main analysis methods included:rapid colorimetric method,atomic absorption spectrophotometry,atomic fluorescence spectrometry,inductively coupled plasma detection method and so on. The last method was used wildly by more and more researchers due to its higher accuracy and precision.