In recent years,the food safety and quality has always been a serious issue.Therefore,it is urgent to develop a rapid and widely available method to determine the quality of food.Due to high spectral resolution,good spectral selectivity and good ability of spectrogram analysis,the technology of two-dimensional(2D) correlation spectroscopy is an effective method for solving three major problems encountered by the conventional one-dimensional(1D) spectrum:low selectivity of the spectra,difficulty in extracting the information of the spectral feature and difficulty in spectrogram analysis.Therefore,2D correlation spectroscopy,which is suited to distinguish similar samples hardly distinguished by the conventional 1D spectroscopy,has been successfully applied in many complex biological systems.The developmental process,the experimental way to obtain spectrum,the fundamental mathematical principle and the properties of 2D correlation spectroscopy were introduced in this paper.At the same time,it is pointed out that the origin of weak characteristic bands of substance can be verified in terms of the positive or negative corss peaks in synchronous 2D correlation spectrum combined with the existence or inexistence of corss peaks in asynchronous 2D correlation spectrum The application of 2D near-infrared,mid-infrared,fluorescence,and raman correlation spectroscopy in the detection of food quality and adulteration,concentrated specifically on diary product,wine,oil,meat,honey,and rice were reviewed.Finally,the limitations and future development prospects were pointed out.