This study highlights the possibility of supercritical carbon dioxide for extracting phenolic compounds from bamboo leaves that have shown antioxidant and anticancer activities. The CO2 extraction solvent was modified by adding ethanol-water mixture cosolvent of different concentrations to allow extraction of both polar and non-polar compounds. Conventional Soxhlet extraction was also done to investigate the advantages of supercritical extraction over the conventional extraction method. For addition of 5% (mol) of a 25:75 (mol:mol) ethanol-water mixture solvent to CO2, the highest amount of polyphenols (7.31 +/- 0.06 mg/g bamboo leaves in catechin equivalents) and radical scavenging activity (3.65 +/- 0.05 mg/g bamboo leaves in BHA equivalents) at 20 MPa and 95 degrees C, could be obtained among the mixture cosolvents studied. For Soxhlet extraction with a 25:75 (mol:mol) ethanol-water mixture, 1.48 times the amount of phenolic compounds (10.85 +/- 0.52 mg/g bamboo leaves in catechin equivalents), could be isolated compared with the supercritical extraction method, however, the radical scavenging activity (3.30 +/- 0.05 mg/g bamboo leaves in BHA equivalents) was 0.90 times lower than the extract obtained from the supercritical extraction method. The seven major antioxidative compounds identified from the SC-CO2 extraction method were: (1) DL-alanine, (2) gluconic acid, (3) phosphoric acid, (4) ss-siosterol, (5) beta-amyrene, (6) alpha-amyrin acetate and (7) friedelin. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.