John Cheese at Cracked posted a list called The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor, but also pointed out that they are perfectly rational from the vantage point of someone who does not have the choices that come with financial solvency. They would seem stupid to anyone who hasn't been there, done that. For example, the food you grew up eating was determined by price and preservatives.

Forget about fresh produce or fresh baked goods or fresh anything. Canned vegetables are as cheap as a gang tattoo, and every poor person I knew (including myself) had them as a staple of their diet. Fruit was the same way. Canned peaches could be split between three kids for half the cost of fresh ones, and at the end you had the extra surprise of pure, liquefied sugar to push you into full-blown hyperglycemia.

If it wasn't canned, it was frozen. TV dinners, pot pies, chicken nuggets ... meals that can be frozen forever, and preparation isn't more complicated than "Remove from box. Nuke. Eat." Because of that, by week two, half of everything we bought would be freezer burned. Just like with the canned food, you grow up thinking that this is the way it's supposed to taste. It's not that you grow to like it, necessarily, but you do grow to expect it.

This is not the humorous Cracked article you may expect, but the text is still NSFW. Link