Explain the term Antioxidants

You must have  at  some point  of  time tasted a stale deep  fried  snack prepared at home or bought from a local sweet shop. Do you remember its foul flavour and how you probably had  to spit it out? What do you think may have been responsible for he foul flavour? The culprit are the unsaturated organic molecules in  foods'mostly fats, pigments, vitamins and other nutrients,  which  are  highly  unstable towards ritmospheric  oxidation. -These undergo  a variety of  chemical and physical changes and form obnoxious taints and  odours in stored  foods. Also the products based on meat,  fish, milk and egg which are rich  in fats, especially the polyunsaturated fatty acids, are more prone to spoilage and need protection. Auto-oxidation  in stored foods not only spoils  the flavour but also depletes  them of essential  fatty acids and vitamins.

Secondly, products of oxidation react with the proteins of the food leading to the loss of essential amino acids, digestibility,  flavour, aroma, texture and basically a lowered nutritional value of the food.