Abstract: Hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography（HILIC） is a separation method similar to the retention mode of normal phase chromatography, which combined of a polar stationary phase（SP） and a mobile phase（MP）containing 2%～40% of water and acetonitrile（＞60%） for the separation of target substances. HILIC is a suitable approach for the separation of strong polar compounds and ionic compounds due to its compounds elution order according to polarity from weak to strong. Nowdays, HILIC has been widely used in food science, the application objects contains endogenous components, exogenous contaminants and toxic compounds. The paper mainly focuses on the application of hydrophilic chromatography in endogenous components of food, including nucleobases, nucleosides,nucleotides, amino acids, peptides, proteins, choline-related compounds, phosphatidylcholine compounds, carbohydrates and vitamins, in order to provide a reference for the separation analysis of unknown components in food.