The work aims to summarize the research progress, existing problems and future development direction of water-proof and oil-proof modification of paper food packaging materials at home and abroad in recent years. The work summarized the research status of water-proof agents (alkylketene dimer, nanocomposite, polysiloxane, et al) and oil-proof agents (chitosan, starch, et al), including basic characteristics, application effect and development prospect of various water-proofing agents and oil-proof agents. At present, a great number of novel water-proof and oil-proof agents and materials were studied and applied. Nevertheless, some deficiencies remained unsolved in this field. The safety and environmental protection performance of some waterproof and oil-proof agents needed to be improved. There were few researches on the comprehensive water-proof and oil-proof modification. The practical application conversion rate of research results was not high. And the comprehensive packaging effect and modification treatment methods of water-proof and oil-proof paper packaging can be further improved and enriched. Therefore, more efforts should be put into the above questions, which were all of great significance to the development of paper food packaging. Market and consumer have large demand for paper food packaging. The research on water-proof and oil-proof modification of paper food packaging will have great development space and application value in the future.