The work aims to analyze the quality problems of self-heating foods, summarize the main causes of the problems, and propose methods to improve the quality of self-heating food, so as to provide theoretical basis for the upgrading of self-heated food in the future. Existing problems of self-heating food, such as microbial contamination and chemical gas infiltration pollution, and the existing ways to improve the quality of self-heating food were analyzed and summarized. At present, there are mainly processing pollution and packaging material pollution in self-heating food products. The future development should focus on the hygiene and safety control of the production line, the development and application of green packaging materials, the control of food additives in production, the improvement of industry safety standards and the application of shelf life models and risk assessment, so as to improve the quality of self-heating food and meet the growing customer needs and protect public health.