To provide a more biologically compatible process that is capable of extracting vegetable material, such as grape seeds, to obtain an isolated procyanidin extract having a low mean degree of polymerization (mdp).SOLUTION: There is provided a method for extracting grape seeds, comprising: extracting grape seeds with hot water; enzymatically treating and fine-filtering the extract so as to substantially remove insoluble vegetable material; processing the enzymatically treated extract by ultrafiltration so as to obtain a first permeate and a first retentate, in which larger molecular weight polymers are removed from the first permeate, and the first permeate comprises at least 80% sugars; and reconstituting the first retentate with water, then processing the first retentate by ultrafiltration so as to obtain a second permeate that contains polyphenols having a mean degree of polymerization of less than 3, and a second retentate enriched in edible fibers and polyphenols having a mdp of greater than 5.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 1
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