Anorexia , a common symptom of cancer patients, is not conducive to the implementation of the anti-tumor treatment measures, it can lead to inadequate intake of nutrients, pancytopenia, weight loss, decrease of adipose tissue and skeletal muscle and decline their quality of life. Accurate assessment of the anorexia process is essential to both research and clinical management, scientific evaluation methods and techniques of appetite are not only a tool to objectively evaluate the appetite, but also the basic of further understanding and predicting the malnutrition. By reviewing domestic and foreign researches on the evaluation of appetite and cancerous anorexia, we summarized the evaluation methods and drugs commonly used. The appetite evaluation methods for cancer patients included inquiry method, VAS, FAACT-A/CS-12 and so on, each method had its own focus. However, there was no consensus on the appetite evaluation tool for cancer patients. Although the clinical treatment of anorexia could bring patients putting on weight, it was still necessary to take the side-effects of drugs into account, in order to effectively improved the anorexia situation of cancer patients and made the most of it.