REVIEW article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Food Science Technology
Analytical Challenges and Opportunities in the Extraction, Separation, and Identification of Food Phospholipids
Provisionally accepted
Abdulmannan Fadel1,2*
Abir Bahi2
Yazan Ranneh3
Carine Platat2
Moza Saif Obaid Alyammahi2Mariam Faleh Hamad Alnuaimi2- 1United Arab Emirates University, Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates
- 2United Arab Emirates University College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates
- 3Al Ain University College of Pharmacy, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates
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Phospholipids (PLs) are minor but functionally important food lipids whose amphiphilic structure and strong interactions with the complex food matrix make their extraction and analysis challenging. This review summarizes a matrix-aware synthesis of current strategies for PLs extraction, purification, separation, and identification across major food sources, including eggs, dairy products, plant oils, marine oils, and microbial oils. While traditional solvent-based systems are the "gold standard", new, emerging "greener" technologies such as supercritical CO₂, ultrasound, microwave, enzyme-assisted, pressurized liquid extraction, and deep eutectic solvents show promise in terms of selectivity, efficiency, molecular integrity, and environmental sustainability. Due to the lack of universal standard methodology, this review emphasizes a tiered, objective-driven analytical framework in which extraction is adapted to the matrix origin, followed by cartridge solid-phase extraction for PLs enrichment, and progressively deeper analytical resolution. The most effective analytical approach combines orthogonal tools, including TLC for qualitative screening, UHPLC coupled with universal detectors (CAD/ELSD) for robust class-level quantification, LC-MS(/MS) for molecular-species identification and oxidation/lysophospholipid monitoring, ^31P NMR for independent class-level validation, and GC-FAME for fatty-acyl profiling. The substantial variability among published results is attributed to non-standardized extraction methods, different detector responses, and matrix-dependent effects. Accordingly, a flexible, matrix-aware analytical workflow is proposed highlighting future priorities in standardization, automation, and validation of greener technologies and analytical strategies to achieve reproducible, comparable, and sustainable PLs analytical and production processes.
Keywords: extraction, Food matrix, IDENTIFICATION, Methodological standardization, Phospholipids, SEPARATION
Received: 10 Nov 2025; Accepted: 15 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Fadel, Bahi, Ranneh, Platat, Alyammahi and Alnuaimi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Abdulmannan Fadel
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