Abstract: A novel method is proposed for the simultaneous separation and determination of night food additives,saccharin sodium,acesulfame potassium,benzoic acid,sorbic acid,carmine,amaranth,tartrazine,sunset yellow and caffeine by reversed- phase high performance liquid chromatography. The separation was achieved within 10 min by using a Nova-Pak reverse phase C18 column (150mm×3.9mm,4μm,Waters Inc) with 20mmol/L NH4Ac (pH6.8)-methanol as mobile phase (gradient elution: methanol: 5% 5min; 5%～30%,12.5%/min; 30% continued 3min; 30%～5%,25%/min),and lastly detected at 234nm through a UV detector. The average recoveries for real samples ranged from 77.0% to 108.5%.

Key words: food, food additives, high performance liquid chromatography .