About eight years ago I took my now wife to West Virginia's Cranberry Wilderness for her first backpacking trip. Since this was a spur of the moment 4-day trip, and I didn't have a lot of time to prepare, I took a couple of prepacked freeze-dried meals I had in my equipment box.

The first freeze-dried meal was okay but the second, which we ate on our last night out, was horribly and unedibly stale. Upon closer inspection of the packaging, I found a number of small pin holes from it being carelessly tossed around the gear box for a couple of years.  I guess air got in and did it's thing. My future wife was not amused since, when I backpack, I never bring extra food and we went to bed with only a handful of gorp.

She still brings it up!

Chuck