To develop a fast and accurate method with simple pretreatment and good selectivity to detect 16 plasticizers in different types of foods in this study. After extraction of different types of foods using different solvents， the phthalate esters (PAEs) were further cleaned up and eluted by solid phase extraction. Then after concentration, the extracts were directly injected into gas chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS). The 16 PAEs in different types of foods were determined using the internal standard method. There was a good linear relation among the 16 PAEs, and the method quantification limits were between 0.01 mg/kg and 0.03 mg/kg. Spiking experiments at high, medium and low levels revealed that the average recoveries ranged from 65.7% to 115.3%, and the relative standard deviations were lower than 15% (n=6). The method was shown to be rapid and reliable, with low solvent consumption. The application of tandem mass spectrometry better eliminated the interference of matrix effects, resulting in high sensitivity and more accurate qualitative measurements.