Methods of isolating phenols from phenol-containing media. The methods include combining a phospholipid-containing composition with the phenol-containing medium to generate a combined medium, incubating the combined medium to precipitate phenols in the combined medium and thereby form a phenol precipitate phase and a phenol-depleted phase, and separating the phenol precipitate phase and the phenol-depleted phase. The methods can further include extracting phenols from the separated phenol precipitate phase. The extracting can include mixing the separated phenol precipitate phase with an extraction solvent to solubilize in the extraction solvent at least a portion of the phenols originally present in the phenol precipitate phase.
Potential commercial products could include juices with stabilized pigments/polyphenols (resulting in longer shelf lives) or the bioactive components isolated from juices (e.g. tannins, flavonoids, etc.). This method could also produce stable pigmented clusters used as ingredients, nutraceuticals, or pigments.