What does stale mean? What makes tortilla chips, cereal, etc. stale? How can you "revive" stale foods?

Question

I need this for extra credit in my science class...

Answer 1

Air makes it stale. You can sometimes put it in the oven for a few minutes to crisp it up.

Answer 2

A number of the answers here are close but might not be complete.

Stale is a term that we often use in place of "bad," but that's not exactly accurate. We might use "stale bread" to make croutons for a salad.

When it comes to food, the best meaning for stale is that the product has aged to the point that it no longer looks or tastes as was intended when it was initially produced.

How and why things go stale depend on what they are. Take something like bread. Bread may become stale if it looses its moisture content - - effectively drying out.

Your tortilla chips can go stale for a couple reasons. One of them is the opposite of what happens with bread - - they can absorb moisture from the air, making them somewhat soggy. This can happen to cereal as well. When you carefully seal up the bag that these products came in, you're trying to keep moisture out of the product.

But since tortilla chips (and similar snack foods) are normally cooked in oils, these products can go stale because those oils they are cooked in can pick up something else from the air: oxygen. When oils pick up oxygen from the air, they are said to become rancid. Rancid oils impart a strange smell and taste to the food, and there is some information that suggests that they aren't safe to eat.

It's possible to "revive" some foods. For example, you can take a bread product, wet it slightly, and put it in a sealed bag. This can introduce some moisture back into such a product if it dried out. You can do a similar trick with a microwave oven, if you wet the product slightly and cook it in there - - but keep in mind that you're talking about just a few SECONDS of cooking time in most cases. If it doesn't work after that, you probably won't have any luck.

So the bottom line is that products become stale by either drying out, getting wet, or going rancid, depending on what kind of product you started with.

Good luck!
mz

Answer 3

For food, staleness comes from taking on moisture or losing moisture. For example a loaf of bread will be dry and crumb easily when stale (someone left the bag open), because bread will get moldy if you leave it closed, because the moisture stays in. On the other hand chips, crackers etc. do just the opposite, they obtain moisture from the air and lose their crispiness to become more chewy-same with many cereals or popcorn.

Agree with Connie low heat oven- Don't microwave.

Answer 4

I wouldnt give him/her any food that you would normally eat, you dont want them getting used to the smell and looking to graze everytime you are eating. On the other hand, if you don't mind this then its probably fine to give to them, however you run the risk of them getting a bit chubbier, dogs should ideally be given only what is suitable for them and I dont think chips fall under that category. I wouldn't do it, but at the end of the day, everything considered, its completely up to you. The dog will soon tell you if they don't like them! Good luck

Answer 5

Having lost freshness, effervescence, or palatability: stale bread; stale air.
Lacking originality or spontaneity: a stale joke.
Impaired in efficacy, vigor, or spirit, as from inactivity or boredom.
Law Having lost effectiveness or force through lack of exercise or action.

Answer 6

stale is when something isnt how it should be like for example you can tell that your cereal is stale because its no longer crunchy your teeth just bites between it but it doesnt crunch or break apart easily, it becomes kinda mushy. food becomes stale when it sits out for a long time and havent been eatin.

Answer 7

my first impulse is to say stale things have lost moisture content thru evaporation.---seems like I have heard of placing a sliced apple in a bag with stale bread, and the bread absorbing moisture from the apple...

Answer 8

stale chips, stale bread, stale anything i wouldn't even consider reviving

Answer 9

crackers and chips can be put in a low oven to recrisp up.

Answer 10

it means they need the mystic force power rangers to save them. Or the special forces of the american military since the mystic force p.r.'s are really just a commercial meant to program america's next generation of special forces soldiers.