Food safety is closely related to people's health, and has been an outstanding focus. One of the main risk of food safety is a wide variety of food contamination, but the hazard of the contamination are not the same. Rapid, sensitive and accurate detection of food contamination is an important tool. The detection method of gold nanoparticles has the advantages of simple operation, convenient operation, high sensitivity and high specificity. In this paper, the research of nano gold detection in food contamination is summarized, and the prospects of nano gold application is put forward.