Food goes bad

Although they all have much the same meaning, in usage they are more specific. Food made with flour will go stale (breads, cakes, cookies/biscuits). Organic matter (primarily meat and fish) will go bad . Fruits become over-ripe and go bad.

Food becoming spoiled (mouldy and sour) is unfit for human consumption.

Stale mostly means dried out. Loss of flavor.

Spoiled and gone bad are the same thing.

When constructing the sentence, it sounds a bit odd to me to state how long something has been spoiling.

Try:

"The cake went bad/spoiled a few days ago."

Hi,

Thank you both feebs11 and Vorpar for your explanation. But I am afraid I am a little confused and have more questions to ask.

According to what you said, 'stale' is used with food made from flour, such as cake, and bread etc. Therefore, can't it be used with any other kinds of foods like fruit, vegetables, meat, etc.?

If bread is stale, does it mean that it is unfit

Stale doesn't taste good, and often the consistency isn't righ. It may crumble when it should snap, or be hard and crumbly when it should be soft, and the taste is off. Rarely will stale be "unfit" if you are truly starving, but you may not want to eat it if you are looking for a snack.

Spoiled is not fit for eating. It could make you ill if you eat it.

Bread that i

Hi Grammar Geek,

Thank you very much for explaining the difference between 'go stale' and 'go bad'.
But I am sorry I can't understand the following statement you said:

"I can't imagine how a cake would "spoil" unless mold grew in the icing or it has been left for a very long time."

Do you mean we don't say "a cake has spoiled"?

Becasue 'spoil' and 'go bad'

I mean that cake goes stale, but it rarely goes moldy.

I don't know how you would know how long the milk has been spoiled. Once it's bad, it's bad. Unless you are a scientist and examine it in a lab, I suppose. You could say something like "Wow, this smells so terrible that I bet it's been spoiled for a week."

(Unless of course, you noticed the milk was spoiled and kept it aroun

Stale simply means - the opposite of fresh.
Example:
Bread hardens when stale.
Air smells musty when stale.
Water tastes like metal when stale.

Spoil means the quality of the item is damaged. The item is tainted, putrid, and nasty - if the item is food, it will probably make you sick. After a food spoils it goes rotten.

"go bad" refers to the time it will spoil.

in my opinion,

stale: you order fries in a fish and chip shop, take it home, forget about it for 5 hours and try to eat it then.

bad and spoiled: e.g. milk after exposure to the sun, rotten stuff...

Hi,

They basically mean the same thing, so it's more a question of collocations (what normally goes with what).

Stale is most commonly used with bread, cakes, etc - food made with flour - although chips are obviously not made with flour they also go stale.

Things like fish and meat (organic matter) go bad

Spoiled would apply to any food that is unfit for human consumpti