I have a habit of eating every last bit of food on my plate due to growing up poor.

Basically the title. Ever since I was young, I’ve had a habit of not letting food go to waste to the point where I not only eat every last bit of food I have for that particular dish, but a lot of times I lick it clean to the point where it looks like no one served food on it yet (obviously, I still wash the dish but you get the point).

There was one moment I remember distinctly where one of the aunties at one of the family gatherings I attended was so impressed that I finished everything on my plate, her literal words to my dad were, “wow, he ate every last morsel…”

At the time I didn’t know what the word morsel was until I googled it afterwards, but that was the moment I realized I had this habit.

I didn’t make the connection till today about how this habit might have been formed from my family’s circumstances growing up. My family and I grew up pretty poor. Corned-beef cabbage, spam, Vienna sausage, shoyu, rice, and eggs were all considered delicacies in our home. I didn’t even know we were poor until I saw what the other kids were bringing to school for their home lunch.

There were days where we barely had food and my parents sacrificed their meals in order to keep us from going hungry. At a young age, I knew enough to know that they were doing that so we could survive. After seeing that it makes sense now that I was the only kid that ate his vegetables. I was the only kid who cleaned his plate leaving no crumbs.

I remember all the times where people would throw away food that they could have eaten and that made me angry for some reason. Today I realize that the reason was that I knew what it was like to be unsure if we’d have food to eat that night and that developed a pet peeve of seeing others waste food.

I realized all of this when I looked in one of my take out containers that had a steak meal that I finished earlier and it looked like it hadn’t even been any food in there because I cleaned that plate up spotless.

I don’t know if this is considered a trauma response or what… I’m still learning about all my weird little intricacies I have as an adult that grew out of my childhood. But I guess that’s something I just wanted to get off my chest.