7 eating habits that separate people who grew up lower middle class from those who grew up wealthy

I spent last Thanksgiving watching my family eat the same dishes we've had for decades. Sweet potato casserole with marshmallows. Canned cranberry sauce with the ridges still visible. Green bean casserole from the recipe on the French's fried onions can.

Meanwhile, my partner was texting photos from their family gathering: heritage turkey, artisanal cranberry chutney, roasted vegetables from their CSA box.

Same holiday. Completely different food universes.

The thing is, how we eat says everything about where we came from. And I'm not talking about table manners or which fork to use. I'm talking about the deeper stuff. The relationship with food that gets wired into us before we even know it's happening.

Growing up lower middle class in suburban Sacramento, food meant something specific. It was fuel. It was comfort. It was what you could afford at the end of the week when paychecks were stretched thin.

Now, after years of writing about food culture and spending time with people from different economic backgrounds, I've noticed patterns. Habits that reveal everything about someone's childhood, even decades later.

Let's talk about seven of them.

1) You finish everything on your plate, no matter what

The clean plate club wasn't optional in my house. You ate what was served, and you ate all of it.

My grandmother raised four kids on a teacher's salary, and wasting food was basically a sin. She'd tell stories about the Depression, about going hungry, about what real scarcity looked like.

So you finished your portions. Even if you were full. Even if you didn't like it.

Compare that to my partner's childhood, where leaving food on your plate was perfectly normal. Where people ate until they were satisfied and simply stopped. Where the relationship with food was about enjoyment, not obligation.

This one habit reveals everything about scarcity mindset versus abundance mindset. When you grow up worried about where the next meal comes from, you don't waste a single bite. When you grow up knowing there's always more, you can listen to your body's actual signals.

I still catch myself doing this at restaurants, eating past fullness just because the food is there. It's taken years to unlearn.

2) You judge people by what's in their shopping cart

Here's something I noticed at the grocery store last week: I was behind someone buying organic raspberries for twelve dollars. My immediate internal reaction? "Must be nice."

That judgment comes from somewhere specific. It comes from growing up watching my parents calculate every purchase, putting things back at checkout, choosing the store brand over name brand every single time.

When food is a luxury you have to carefully budget for, seeing someone casually drop money on expensive produce triggers something. It's not jealousy exactly. It's more like disbelief that food can be that... casual.

Wealthy people don't have this reaction. They don't track what's in other people's carts because food shopping was never a source of stress or careful calculation. It was just shopping.

My partner literally doesn't notice prices at the farmers market. They just buy what looks good. Meanwhile, I'm doing math in my head, calculating cost per pound, wondering if we really need the fancy mushrooms.

3) You treat restaurants like special occasions, not routine

Going out to eat was an event in my family. Birthdays. Graduations. Maybe once a month if things were going well.

You'd get dressed up a little. You'd look at the menu prices first, then the actual food. You'd probably get water instead of a soft drink to save three dollars. And you definitely, definitely wouldn't send anything back to the kitchen, even if it wasn't quite right.

I remember being twenty-five and having dinner with someone who sent their steak back because it was medium instead of medium-rare. I was genuinely shocked. That was an option?

People who grew up wealthy treat restaurants differently. They're convenient. They're routine. They're where you go when you don't feel like cooking, not a carefully planned monthly treat.

They also have this comfort with customization that blows my mind. Substitutions. Special requests. Asking how things are prepared. These are people who grew up understanding that in a restaurant, they're the customer, and the experience should match what they want.

When you grow up lower middle class, you're just grateful to be there.

4) Your comfort foods are highly processed and nostalgic

My partner's comfort food is their mom's coq au vin. Mine is Kraft mac and cheese from the box.

There's a reason for this. When you're working with a tight grocery budget, processed foods stretch further. They're cheaper per serving. They last longer in the pantry. They're reliable.

So those become your comfort foods. The tastes you associate with home, with being taken care of, with everything being okay.

I went vegan eight years ago, and one of the hardest parts wasn't giving up fancy cheeses I barely ate anyway. It was reimagining what comfort meant without the processed foods of my childhood. The canned soups. The frozen dinners. The boxed mixes.

People who grew up wealthy have different comfort food memories. Fresh-baked bread. Mom's homemade pasta sauce from garden tomatoes. Things that required time, space, and resources to make.

Both are valid, obviously. But they tell completely different stories about childhood and what was available.

5) You have strong opinions about food waste

I've mentioned this before, but the way people handle leftovers reveals everything.

In my family, leftovers were planned. You'd make a big pot of something specifically so you'd have lunch for the next three days. Nothing went to waste. Ever.

Bread getting stale? Breadcrumbs. Vegetables getting soft? Soup. Rotisserie chicken bones? Stock.

My grandmother could stretch one chicken across five meals, and she'd be proud of it.

Now I live with someone who throws away leftovers after two days. Who buys fresh ingredients for each meal. Who doesn't think twice about tossing vegetables that got forgotten in the crisper drawer.

It physically pains me every time.

This isn't about being environmentally conscious or virtuous. This is about growing up in a house where wasting food meant wasting money you didn't have. Where making things last was survival, not sustainability.

6) You're skeptical of "trendy" or "exotic" foods

When I first heard about jackfruit tacos, my immediate reaction was: why? We have perfectly good tacos already.

This skepticism isn't about being closed-minded. It's about growing up in a food culture where weird meant risky. Where trying new things could mean wasting money on something your family wouldn't eat.

So you stuck to what you knew. What you could pronounce. What you could find at the regular grocery store, not the fancy one across town.

People who grew up wealthy were encouraged to have adventurous palates. They traveled. They ate at diverse restaurants. They learned that trying new foods was exciting, not financially dangerous.

I had to actively push myself out of this mindset. Now I write about vegan food and try new things constantly, but that initial resistance? That's still there. That little voice asking if this is really necessary, if the regular version wouldn't work just fine.

7) You associate abundance with specific "fancy" foods

Want to know if someone grew up lower middle class? Ask them what fancy food means.

For me, it's shrimp. Shrimp meant someone graduated, or it was Christmas, or something really good happened. Shrimp was celebration food.

Also: fresh berries, any cheese that wasn't cheddar, bread from an actual bakery, real maple syrup.

These were the foods that showed up for special occasions. The foods that meant things were good, we could splurge a little, life was working out.

Wealthy people don't have these same markers because those foods were just... available. Normal. Not special.

Recently I was reading Rudá Iandê's book "Laughing in the Face of Chaos," and one insight really stuck with me about inherited programming. He writes: "Most of your 'truths' are inherited programming from family, culture, and society."

That hit different when I thought about food. Because these habits, these reactions, these associations? They're not really mine. They're inherited. Passed down through generations of people doing their best with limited resources.

Understanding that doesn't make them disappear, but it helps me see them for what they are.

Final thoughts

None of these habits are bad, by the way. They're adaptations. Smart responses to real economic constraints.

But they do stick with you. Years after your financial situation changes, you're still finishing your plate, still judging the organic raspberries, still feeling weird about sending food back.

The question isn't whether you have these habits. It's whether you've noticed them. Whether you've thought about where they come from and what they reveal about your relationship with food, with money, with abundance and scarcity.

Because once you see these patterns, you get to decide which ones still serve you and which ones you're ready to let go.

And that's the real meal worth savoring.