I married into old money—these 8 foods my family ate weekly are things his family wouldn't feed their dog

The first time I brought canned green beans to my in-laws' Thanksgiving, my mother-in-law looked at them like I'd presented roadkill. "Oh," she said, with the kind of smile that doesn't reach the eyes. "How practical."

I grew up thinking canned vegetables were just vegetables. Turns out, in some circles, they're evidence of something else entirely. My husband didn't say anything that night, but later I noticed the beans sitting untouched while everyone else ate the roasted Brussels sprouts his sister brought.

That's when I started noticing the pattern. Social class shapes food choices in ways that go beyond budgets—it's about what you think food should be.

1. Boxed mac and cheese

The blue box was a staple in my childhood kitchen. Tuesday night dinner, quick lunch, comfort food when sick. I didn't know there was another way to make mac and cheese until I was 22.

My husband's family makes it from scratch with three kinds of cheese and a breadcrumb topping. When I mentioned Kraft, his brother actually laughed. Not meanly, just genuinely confused that anyone over age six would eat it.

Lower-income families gravitate toward foods that are readily available and shelf-stable. Upper-class families eat foods that signal access to rare or exclusive ingredients. Sometimes that difference is just pasta with cheese sauce.

2. White bread

Wonder Bread. The soft, squishy kind you can compress into a ball. My mom packed our sandwiches with it every day. It was bread.

At my in-laws' house, bread comes from a bakery with a French name I still can't pronounce. Or it's multigrain with visible seeds. My father-in-law once called white bread "nutritionally void." He wasn't wrong, but he also wasn't feeding three kids on a tight budget.

The bread divide is real. Whole grains signal both affluence and nutritional knowledge—the kind you get when you have time to read labels and money to act on them.

3. Frozen dinners

Salisbury steak in a divided tray. Lasagna that microwaved in six minutes. These weren't treats—they were solutions to everyone needing to eat at different times because of work schedules.

My mother-in-law doesn't own a microwave. Not because it broke, but because she doesn't believe in them. She meal preps on Sundays with fresh ingredients and portions everything into glass containers. It's admirable. It's also a luxury of time.

When both parents work retail hours, frozen dinners aren't laziness. They're logistics.

4. Canned soup

Campbell's chicken noodle when you're sick, cream of mushroom as a casserole ingredient, tomato soup with grilled cheese. Canned soup was scaffolding for dozens of meals.

I've watched my sister-in-law make stock from scratch, simmering a chicken carcass for hours. She freezes it in ice cube trays for future use. It's objectively better than Campbell's. It's also not happening in a household where the stove might already be occupied with three other things.

The wealthy can invest time in food preparation because their schedules allow it. Everyone else is doing math: time versus money versus hunger.

5. American cheese slices

The individually wrapped kind. We put it on everything—burgers, grilled cheese, scrambled eggs. It melted perfectly and never went bad.

My husband's cheese drawer contains things I can barely pronounce. Gruyère. Manchego. Something with a rind that looks like it's growing fur on purpose. When I asked about American cheese, he said, "That's not really cheese."

Technically, he's right—it's "cheese product." But it's also affordable, reliable, and familiar. Class differences in food often come down to whether you value what's practical or prestigious.

6. Instant potatoes

Add water, stir, done. We had them twice a week. They tasted like potatoes, more or less, and took up zero mental bandwidth.

My in-laws buy potatoes from farmers markets and debate whether they're waxy or starchy. They discuss Yukon Gold versus Russet like it's a political position. Meanwhile, I'm thinking potatoes are potatoes.

But that's the thing—when you grow up with resources, food becomes an interest. When you grow up without them, it's fuel. Different approaches, same vegetable.

7. Hot dogs

Ball Park franks. Oscar Mayer. Whatever was on sale. We grilled them in summer, boiled them when cold. They were protein, they were easy, and kids would eat them.

At a family barbecue, I watched my father-in-law grill sausages from a specialty butcher. "All-natural casings," he explained. "You can really taste the difference." Maybe you can. I was too busy remembering hot dogs were six for three dollars.

The wealthy treat processed meats like a moral failing. The working class treats them like a solution to feeding people affordably.

8. Soda with dinner

We drank Coke or Pepsi with meals. Not as a treat, just as what you drank. Water was for after playing outside. Milk was for breakfast. Dinner meant soda.

My in-laws drink wine at dinner. Not expensive wine necessarily, but wine. Or sparkling water with lemon. My mother-in-law has never had soda in her house. She wrinkles her nose when she sees it at restaurants.

The drink gap might be the starkest divide. What you pour at dinner broadcasts your class position louder than almost anything else on the table.

Final thoughts

Here's what nobody tells you about marrying into a different economic class: the food judgment cuts both ways. My in-laws sometimes look at my childhood staples with barely concealed horror. But I've also watched my husband pay $8 for bread and thought he'd lost his mind.

Neither approach is wrong. They're just optimized for different constraints. My family optimized for feeding everyone without going broke or insane. His family optimized for quality and nutrition because they could.

The tricky part is recognizing that class shapes our relationship with food so deeply we don't see our own assumptions. I thought canned green beans were normal. My husband thought homemade stock was baseline. What's helped is realizing we're both carrying forward what we learned. Meeting in the middle looks like making mac and cheese from scratch sometimes and from a box other times. Buying the nice bread when it matters and the cheap bread when it doesn't. The real luxury isn't the ingredients—it's having enough space, financial and mental, to choose.