Purine is an alkaloid and it plays extremely important physiological functions in humans such as energy supplement, metabolic regulation and coenzyme composition. But it can be converted to uric acid finally via oxidative metabolism. The hyperuricemia can be induced and leads to gout, when the level of uric acid in the body is higher than a certain threshold. Diet is the important source of purine for human and the content of purine in foods can significantly influence the body's uric acid level. Therefore, it is urgent to determine the content of purine in foods. In this paper, the purine contents in different foods were reviewed. And different pretreatment and detection methods were discussed in order to optimize and improve the detection efficiency of the purine detection method. So that we can guide consumers to control the purine intake and reduce the incidence of gout via the balanced diet.