To establish a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method of simultaneous detection of 11 kinds of artificial pigments including Tartrazine, New red, Amaranth, Carmine, Sunset yellow, Allura Red, Red 2G, Acid blue 9, Azorubine, Erythrosine and Acid orange II, et.al. MethodsThe target compounds in food samples were extracted by ethanol ammonia and purified by WAX cardge. The extracts were determined by a high performance liquid chromatography-diode array detector. ResultsThe results showed that there were good linear relativities (r>0.999) between artificial pigments and absorbance in the content ranging from 1.00 to 20.0 μg/ml. The limit of detection, recovery rate and standard deviation were 0.02-0.06 mg/kg, 81.1%-100.8% and 1.3%-4.9%, respectively (n=6). The detection rate of various pigments in 259 food samples ranged from 0%-22.0%.ConclusionThe method was selective, sensitive and repeatable, and compatible for simultaneous detection of 11 kinds of artificial pigments.