Stale chips

We did the experiments in the first chapter of  "Science Lab in a supermarket" the other day.

First of all if you clicked that link did you see the price!  You have to be kidding me that anyone would pay that much for a science book!  Fortunately my personal book shopper found it much cheaper for me (Thanks Mom!)

Chapter one is all about packaging, It begins with why food is packaged in special ways, and mentions some tricks companies use to make their products look better.  It also discusses how detergent companies  used to go out of their way to add fillers because folk tended to think bigger was better, and now they are green washing by shipping concentrated versions (and saving on gas to transport in the process)  There was also a discussion on different colored lights or packaging.  We happened to have a bag of carrots in the house as we read.  The front had the red lines, the back did not.  It was a very dramatic difference between how bright the carrots looked from the front vs the back.  I googled for a website discussing the ideas and found out 'packaging' is some sort of programing term, thousands of websites offer help on packaging tricks.

I also learned that 'maltodextrin' counts as fiber for packaging, But it is essentially sugar!  Oh and kids in general prefer foods with cartoons over plainer packaging. While I really enjoyed all my reading, I did not find a simple website covering the basics of food packaging.

The experiment was to take 4 different chip bags.  Leave one closed, one open in the fridge, one open on the counter, and one opened then top rolled down and held with a clothespin on the counter.  Since we rarely eat chips (and with the size of the family tend to finish any bag we open all at once) the kids have really never tasted stale chips, and didn't really know how fast it could happen.

The book says the fridge bag should stay crisp, but ours didn't.  Possibly because someone left the fridge open too long accidentally.  The chips on the counter were not to terribly moist.  It wasn't as hot and humid as today is, I think the results would have been far more interesting if we left the bag outside, or had the air off for the day.  (though our house is not particularly cool). Dude guessed the chips in the fridge would be the best tasting of the open bags, and according to the book he should have been right.

While looking for a full explanation of why chips become stale for anyone interested in doing this experiment (since my understanding 'Salt likes water') isn't very good I found this How stuff works site showing how chips were accidentally invented.

Many sites talking about stale chips mention you can 'refresh' them by microwaving for a few seconds or placing in the oven.  Pretty neat idea.  I also read if you want to keep them fresh longer you should freeze them.  Makes me want to go buy a couple more bags so we can try it out.

I finally followed a link to 'Can a person die from eating stale chips' for a decent explanation of why chips become stale.  I now understand better.  'salt likes water, and fresh chips have very little'

I loved having an excuse to eat sour  cream and onion chips, all for science!