Objective An accurate method was developed for the simultaneous determination of twelve kinds of synthetic colorants in food.Methods Synthetic colorants,including lemon,brillian tblack,sunset,allura,fast green,pocean 2R,uranin,Ponceau 3R,patent bule,orange yellow,phlexine B,rose Bengal in food samples were prepare with the improvemented procedures described in GB/T 5009.35—2003 and were solid-phase extracted by 100-200 mesh polyamide adsorption.Sample solution were separated by reverse phase liquid chromatography with methanol-0.02 mol/L ammonium acetate solution as mobile phase under gradient elution,and quantified by photodiode array detector.Results The calibration curves showed a good linearity with correlation from 0.999 3-0.999 9.The linear range for the quantification of lemon,brillian tblack,sunset,allura,fast green,Ponceau 3R,patent bule,orange yellow,phlexine B was 0.1-30.0 μg/ml,pocean 2R was 1.0-30.0 μg/ml,uranin was 0.5-30.0 μg/ml and rose Bengal was 2.0-30.0 μg/ml.The recovery of the method was from 89.1% to 100.4%.The relative standard deviation(RSD) was from 1.6%-8.2% and the detection limit was from 0.58~3.0 mg/kg.Conclusion The method is simple,sensitive and accurate and can be used to quantify the twelve synthetic colorants in foods at the same time.