Metabolic fingerprinting analysis is one of the important research strategies of metabolomics.It is fast,high-throughput,and overall analysis.With the summarizes of relevant metabolites from home and abroad in recent years,the paper describes its concept and classification,processing and application in metabolic markers in nutrition study,metabolism study,investigation and evaluation of diet,differences identification in raw materials,and food quality evaluation and food trace back.Meanwhile,the problems of the technology applied in food science and future development of the technology were discussed.