Jim,
I’d like to put my two cents in the coffee discussion. I work with a major coffee roaster and I know we and probably no other roaster in the country packages stale coffee. When beans are roasted they can be exposed to oxygen for a long time with out going stale. However, when the beans are ground they do have to be packaged quickly or they will go stale. If our ground coffee is not packed within 28 hours it is sent to the compost center.
The comment about the coffee being packed stale because other wise the bags would "blow up" is misleading. After the coffee is ground is gives off a lot of CO2, as it gets older less CO2 is released. If you were to put fresh ground coffee into a sealed bag, the bag would in deed expand greatly. That is why most if not all roasters have a one way valve built into the bag, the CO2 is released as the coffee outgases and no oxygen is allowed in the bag to make the coffee stale.
Our coffee has a printed shelf life of nine months, but it would take a real coffee expert to tell the difference in taste if the coffee was several years old. – L.C.