8 foods you call ‘fancy’ that rich people fed their kids as a Tuesday snack

I realized how differently I’d grown up when a college friend casually mentioned her family always had fresh berries in the house. Not as a treat. Just… always. Like milk or bread.

In my house, berries were what you bought for birthdays or when company was coming. They went on top of things, garnishing whatever made the meal feel elevated. The idea of eating them straight from the container, as a snack, on a random Tuesday—that was wealth I didn’t have language for yet.

There’s a category of foods that occupy this weird space. Things I thought were fancy because they appeared rarely in my life, but that were completely ordinary to people with more money. Not caviar and champagne—that’s obviously luxury. But everyday items that signal casual abundance most people don’t realize is a class marker.

1. Fresh berries (any season, any day)

Strawberries in January. Blueberries as an after-school snack. Raspberries going bad in the fridge because no one got around to eating them.

I learned to make berries last—cutting strawberries into quarters, rationing them across a week. The idea of buying them just to have them available, without a specific plan, felt extravagant.

Wealthier households don’t think about berries this way. They’re baseline fruit, like apples. The casualness is the luxury.

2. Real parmesan cheese (the kind you grate yourself)

The green can was parmesan to me until my twenties. The real stuff—the hard wedge you grate fresh—only existed in restaurants.

People with money keep actual Parmigiano-Reggiano in their fridge the way I kept sliced cheese. They grate it over Tuesday night pasta. Kids grow up thinking that powdery substance in the can is a completely different food item.

The math is almost funny. Real parmesan lasts forever and costs less per use. But that $12 upfront creates a barrier that sorts people into cheese categories they don’t realize exist.

3. Nuts as a casual snack (not just at Christmas)

A bowl of mixed nuts meant either Christmas or company. The rest of the year, snacks meant crackers or chips—things that came in big boxes and lasted.

I didn’t realize some families kept containers of cashews around constantly until I started spending time in other people’s homes. Kids packed them in lunch boxes like it was nothing.

A container of cashews costs what you’d spend on snacks for a week. That’s how baseline items become special occasion items.

4. Smoked salmon on a weekday morning

Lox belonged to fancy brunches—the kind with mimosas and cloth napkins. It appeared on bagels when you were trying to impress someone.

Then I stayed at a friend’s house where smoked salmon was just Tuesday breakfast. Her younger brother ate it before school, same as I would have eaten cereal.

When you can eat smoked salmon without it being an event, you’re operating in a different food economy.

5. Expensive olive oil (that you actually cook with)

We had vegetable oil for cooking and maybe one bottle of olive oil for salad. The peppery, expensive stuff was for dipping bread at Italian restaurants.

I watched someone use $30 olive oil to sauté vegetables once and nearly said something. They poured it liberally, the way I’d use canola. Multiple bottles sat in their pantry, each for different purposes.

At a certain income level, good olive oil isn’t an extravagance. It’s just cooking.

6. Prosciutto wrapped around melon

This screamed “fancy dinner party” to me. Something you’d see on a platter when people were performing sophistication.

A friend’s mom put it out as an after-school snack once. Just something kids ate while doing homework, no occasion.

Buying cured meat for children to eat casually, without a second thought about cost per slice—that’s a level of food budget freedom most households can’t imagine.

7. Fresh herbs for everything

These came dried in little jars when I was growing up. Fresh herbs required a specific recipe and total commitment. You used every leaf because waste wasn’t an option.

Wealthier kitchens have multiple bunches sitting in water. They throw whole handfuls into weeknight pasta. Some go bad and get tossed. The waste itself is the signal.

Someone once told me they grew herbs in their kitchen window, not as a hobby but because it was easier than buying them. That casualness revealed an entirely different relationship to food.

8. Actual maple syrup (not the corn syrup kind)

Real maple syrup was $12 a bottle versus $3 for Mrs. Butterworth’s. We bought the cheap version and that was fine—it’s what pancake syrup tasted like to me.

Kids in wealthier families have always had real maple syrup. They don’t know there’s a fake version. They pour it freely, without anyone monitoring the amount.

Real maple syrup isn’t wildly expensive. But when you’re optimizing every grocery decision, those small premiums add up. The real version becomes “fancy” by default.

Final thoughts

These foods aren’t actually fancy. They’re regular items that feel fancy because of context.

If fresh berries appeared three times a year, they’re fancy. If they’re always in the fridge, they’re just fruit. The food doesn’t change—your relationship to affording it does.

What struck me most was realizing how many everyday luxuries I’d coded as special occasions. The casualness of abundance is its own language. You can’t spot it unless you’ve lived without it. Kids who grow up with real maple syrup don’t think of it as fancy. Kids who grow up with corn syrup don’t feel deprived. The class marker only becomes visible when the two worlds collide.