If I prefer it, it’s not lesser quality. That’s how I roll.
I’ve tried several brands of upscale and expensive root beer. They all taste like medicine to me. I’ll take an A&W or even the store brand any day.
Wine. The more the “experts” gush about it, the crappier and sour-er* it tastes. I’ll take a cheap box wine from the Exxon station over the high dollar stuff any day.
*more sour? Not sure how to word this.
I was going to say most everything for food and drink, but then I thought about it some more, and that’s not really true. I generally prefer low- to mid-grade brands over both off-brand and high-end brands. But, even then I tend to favor off-brand over high-end.
Store-brand potato chips? I’ll gladly eat them if they’re on offer, but I don’t buy them. Lay’s brand potato chips? Yum! Gourmet brand artisanal GMO-free organic kettle chips with sea salt?* 
I like Papa John’s. I mean, it’s not a proper Chicago-style pizza, but it’s not so much that a good Chicago-style pizza is a better pizza than Papa John’s as it is that it’s just a different food. And while I don’t particularly care for Little Caesar’s pizza, I’ll take it any day of the week and twice on Sunday over any of the “gourmet” pizzas I’ve ever had.
At Subway, easily my favorite sandwich is also the cheapest one, the cold cut combo (I’m not sure that counts, since everything at Subway is basically lunch meat). I’ve had subs from other places that I preferred to Subway, but they’re generally not worth the additional cost to me. And I outright prefer Subway to, for example, Quizno’s (are they even in business anymore? The ones in my area are all closed).
*I have a friend who is addicted to Trader Joe’s - and that’s not much of an exaggeration. For a pre-COVID gaming session we were both part of, she brought those chips to share, because she knew that I “liked regular potato chips.” Apparently, to her those were “regular” potato chips because they were actually potato chips instead of quinoa chips (which she has also brought to gaming sessions) and didn’t have any fancy additional flavorings (beyond the sea salt, which I swear to FSM was also called out on the packaging as being organic and GMO-free).
I don’t eat them a lot, but when I do have a store bought pot pie, I prefer the cheap brand.
I can go for the artisanal kettle chips, or for a good-old, traditional Lays. What I don’t like are all the added flavorings; sour cream and onion, nacho cheese, etc. I want my potato chips to taste like potatoes and my tortilla chips to taste like tortillas. Is that too much to ask?
I also started a thread once about the encroachment of cheeseburgers over hamburgers as the default burger choice. I’ve seen restaurants that don’t have a hamburger on the menu, and ordering a cheeseburger without the cheese shouldn’t ever be necessary.
Soap. I don’t want added moisturizers, I just want soap.
Pizza. You can’t improve upon perfection. Any place that tries to elevate pizza fails. Just make me a frisbee with sauce, cheese, and pepperoni in a pizza oven. Brown some of the edges, have big bubbles in the crust, caramelize some of the cheese. . .that’s the stuff! Although I will admit in my teen years I dallied with Priazza pizzas from Pizza Hut, but I was a big teen and couldn’t pack food away fast enough back then. "A pizza on top of a deep-dish pizza? Bring me two, and a pitcher of Coke. What will you guys have? "
My morning coffee. Well, any coffee that I make for my own consumption.
Most people will set up their coffee pot for a morning cup with grounds, or go to a local Starbucks or kiosk. Nope, not me. . . I’m an instant coffee guy. I don’t like to wait, nor am I as snobbish to spend $20-some-odd dollars a pound for fancy-schmancy “premium blend.” Just gimme a hot slog of mud, and I’m a happy pup.
Now, on occasion, I will get some New Mexico pinon blend, but it’s not a habit.
Tripler
Caffiene. Now.
For most uses, I prefer Krab to Crab. The one time I prefer real crab is for crab-cakes.
Coffee’s a good one. I don’t do instant but that’s at least partially because I like having a pot to return to rather than have to make each cup individually. But if I find myself in a legitimate coffee place, it’s usually me trying to figure out which brew is going to taste most like gas station coffee.
Along the same ground, my beer consumption consists of mass market macrobrews like MGD. “OMG it’s like beer-flavored yellow water!” is a feature for me compared to the nasty tasting “real” beer that enthusiasts insist I should be drinking.
I wouldn’t consider kalamata olives as similar to black olives. Just as I wouldn’t consider green olives as being similar. These are three very different things.
Maybe it’s time they climb down out of the high chair and make their own? 
That’s a brew that depends strongly on how far you are from České Budějovice. I first had it in České Krumlov, a few kilometers down the road; it was amazing. We tried it a few days later in Germany and, while it was fine, it wasn’t the same. I’ve since had it in the States (Czechvar) and it’s just meh.
Don’t get me wrong. It never gets down to Anheuser-Busch levels (yes, I’m aware of current ownership). It’s just so much better when it’s fresh.
I’d also hardly call it a dark beer just because it doesn’t look like pee.
I like other beers but for just drinking at home, it’s usually Miller Lite.
I also drink instant at home. I wouldn’t say I prefer it over fresh brewed but the convenience wins the day. I’m a little picky about which instant with Nescafe Classico my favorite. I usually buy a few jars when I see it below 70 cents an ounce.
It occurred to me a while back that I’ve very rarely enjoyed food at a restaurant that advertised itself as “authentic”.
I won’t eat mashed potatoes unless they’re the “instant” ones made from dehydrated flakes.
I like the old candies that were mostly maltodextrin. Smarties, Sweetarts, Spree, those kind of things.
They used to have a few in each batch that kind of fell apart in your mouth and dissolved. Now they are made too well and don’t do that anymore. And the chewable kind are just an abomination.
They will give you swollen taste buds if you eat to many. Oh, and Necco Wafers are just wallpaper paste in tablet form.
As someone who has a Necco Vault full of “original recipe” wafers, I must take exception to this. If you peruse the ingredients, you’ll notice that “wallpaper paste” comes well after “library chalk” and “chalk from the cliffs of Dover”. And “white sugar”, but that’s a given, since they were made before corn syrup was invented.
I prefer manual myself. More interesting. Used to be the case that automatics and I tended to disagree about when to shift, but they seem to have gotten smarter. 
The ground beef stroganoff you describe sounds a lot like one I learned from my brother-in-law, but we use cream of mushroom and sour cream. I like either “proper” stroganoff (as long as the sauce doesn’t have a noticeable alcohol taste from any wine) or the proletarian version :).
Nothing wrong with box mac&cheese, IMO. I’m also a fan of frozen lasagna, and like Tex-Mex just fine. I can even enjoy Taco Bell, even though I do hesitate to call something that gringo-ized Mexican food. I just treat TB as its own thing.