When you were poor you apparently had time to make a meal with the meat and greens you bought. But llamataboot mentioned time constraints so you must've missed that.

"we" have lived thru a major cultural shift where 30 years ago when I was a starving student, we didn't have loans (or high tuition) and we did starve. All of us, pretty much. Entire generations went to uni unable to afford junk food because a meal at the restaurant was like one weeks groceries, its unaffordable. I ate a lot of salad. Even pizza delivery was kinda an investment to be budgeted and rarely experienced.

Economic changes over the last couple decades mean college students today are poorer than ever on the balance sheet with $100K of college loans etc, but have wealthy people level cash flows. So when your tuition alone is $30K, you can squeeze the bank for an extra $6 for a big mac at any time. Or all college students today have new iphones, new macbooks, etc. But this is a very new phenomena and has lead to weird cultural beliefs among the very young (say gen Y and younger), like "all poor people pig out on junk food" because modern college students think they experienced real poverty in school when they used the same macbook for two years instead of upgrading every six months like the rich kids (LOL).

There are weird statistic warping exceptions, like homeless people have no where to cook or eat, so they disproportionately eat at McDonalds. Also, for very poor people, an occasional trip to the McDonalds for a value meal is like my occasional trips to the $200/plate steakhouse, so their intake skews junkfood, but its very low. And there are the struggling addict types where the money is getting spent in the next 5 minutes and if its not food in the belly it'll be injected death so they skew toward junk food as a preventative.

There is some truth to poor people are often poor because they find ways to waste money, and junk food being a very expensive way to eat, it is in itself a minor status symbol in that culture. My class level would show off the expensive watch my aunt bought me when I graduated, even though my people never wear watches anymore, but they'd show off they bought an entire 2L bottle of corn syrup soda, because, thats what they can afford and their peers can't afford.

Good point. I know someone who was born with HIV. They can maintain the condition indefinitely, but the combination of drugs comes to over $200 per month in just co-pays. This person was born to it, and you can blame the parents for being irresponsible, but this person had no input. Now this person has to consistently maintain insurance and a steady income significantly above what most people need or risk being unable to afford medication and face terminal illness. Fortunately this person was raised by people capable of meeting her needs, has worked consistently since adulthood, and is working toward future security, but if things had been stacked the other way, this person could easily have not reached adulthood, or not survived much beyond that.

So, certainly being poor vs being rich makes a difference beyond individual habits.