Maybe I'm wrong, but from my personal experiences in NA and Europe, even though wasting is "frowned upon", there's no feeling of "guilt" with the action of "waste". Honestly, I'm not sure how to explain it.

To understand "generational" behavior it's helpful to understand the prevailing conditions at the time.

Obviously these become somewhat sweeping generalizations but they largely hold.

A concern either waste directly correlates to abundance. Countries with historical (ie post war) food insecurity treat food like it is precious. Even if it has since become abundant.

People who grow up with financial insecurity spend money very carefully, even if they now earn plenty.

These attitudes span generations. The attitude of parents often gets taught to children. Although in some cases a generation will "flip".

For example, the post war boom in births lead to a generation that had to compete for infrastructure all the time. There were limited school places, jobs, promotions etc. "Winning" became the driving force. Winners got rewarded, losers got left behind.

Their children (x-gen) refused to play the game. They prioritized family over work. They handed out trophies for "participation". They talk about "work / life" balance.

Each of us is a product of our upbringing. Some things we carry forward as important values. Others we actively discard as unwanted mistakes our parents made.

On the upside our kids will do the same.

Middle class millennial French here: there's a very real concept of guilt in relation to food at least (somewhat less for electricity and water, but still).

It's considered a normal habit to always finish what's on your plate, even when you're not hungry anymore. But it's true that attitudes have softened a bit in this regard, especially at the restaurant; but when you're in control of the amount you're taking, you're still expected to not have "eyes bigger than your belly".

Did you have grandparents who lived through the Great Depression? Were your great grandparents adults during that? Mine were. My parents also both grew up fairly poor, partly in single-mother homes with multiple siblings. The guilt about wasting things, especially food, can be very real in North America.

Maybe your generation or your family's economic class is just very different from mine.