The possibility to alter the electrical conductivity of solid foods by blanching pretreatment has been studied by Sarang et al. In this study the solid constituents of chicken chow mein (chicken, celery, bean sprouts, mushroom, water chestnuts) have been blanched in a highly conductive soy sauce at 100 C for different lengths of time to adjust their electrical conductivity to that of the chow mein sauce; the modifications in the electric conductivity of the chicken and vegetables were determined. As the vegetable tissue is heated, structural changes like cell wall breakdown, tissue damage, increase of mobile moisture, and softening occur, affecting the electrical conductivity. Thus heating causes more mobile moisture, increasing ionic mobility, which in turn increases the electrical conductivity. It was also observed that there was a time limit (5-6 min) beyond which the blanching of mushroom for further processing may cause shrinkage and loss of porosity of the material and therefore causing a decrease of its electric conductivity. The blanched chicken meat did not show a significant increase in conductivity: this fact is attributed to the chicken meat behavior that typically shrinks and becomes less permeable after blanching as opposed to most vegetables tissue, which turns soft. In fact, while the ionic content is increased in chicken after blanching, the overall ionic mobility may be reduced due to low permeability. These opposed effects may explain why only small increases in the electrical conductivity could be observed for chicken meat