Thanksgiving is a time for friends, family, gratitude and of course, food. Despite the controversy surrounding the history of Thanksgiving, one thing we can all agree on is that Thanksgiving dinner is amazing. Here are ten fun facts about the food being served on the fourth Thursday of November.
1. “Historians say that no turkey was served at the first Thanksgiving! What was on the menu? Deer or venison, ducks, geese, oysters, lobster, eel and fish. They probably ate pumpkins, but no pumpkin pies. They also didn't eat mashed potatoes or cranberry relish, but they probably ate cranberries. And no, Turduckens (a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken) were nowhere to be found during that first Thanksgiving.”
2. “Americans consume 736 million pounds of turkey on Thanksgiving Day alone (about the weight of the Empire State Building).”
3. “A person consumes an average of 3,000 calories at Thanksgiving.”
4. “A Thanksgiving mix-up inspired the first TV dinners. In 1953, a Swanson employee accidentally ordered a colossal shipment of Thanksgiving turkeys (260 tons, to be exact). To get rid of them all, salesman Gerry Thomas took inspiration from the prepared foods served on airplanes. He came up with the idea of filling 5,000 aluminum trays with the turkey – along with cornbread dressing, gravy, peas, and sweet potatoes to round out the meal. The 98-cents meals were a hit, especially with kids and increasingly busy households.”
5. “Approximately 50 million pumpkin pies are consumed each Thanksgiving. (If there are eight slices per pie, that's 400 million slices…but there are only 320 million Americans.)”
6. “We know that the first Plymouth colonists didn't have access to white flour or butter, so traditional bread stuffing wouldn't have been possible yet. Instead, according to Wall, they may have used chestnuts, herbs, and chunks of onion to flavor the birds, all of which were already part of the local fare. Centuries later, we're still stuffing turkeys as a way to keep the bird moist through the roasting process and add extra flavor.”
7. “White and dark meat are different muscles. The darker the meat, the more myoglobin, a protein that ships oxygen to the muscles. Because turkeys run around more than they fly, their legs and thighs get more oxygen and are darker than breast meat. Three ounces of dark meat without the skin has 147 calories, 5 grams of fat, and 24 grams of protein. The same amount of white meat has 125 calories, 2 grams of fat, and 26 grams of protein.”
8. “The presenting of the live turkey to the President has been a tradition since 1947. The President then pardons the turkey, allowing it to live out its remaining years on a farm.”
9. “Thirty-five percent of Americans have had pie for breakfast, 66 percent have had it for lunch, and 59 percent have eaten pie as a midnight snack.”
10. “Although there is a lot of food at many Thanksgiving celebrations, cooking in bulk lowers the price. The cost of the average Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people is around $50. At only $5 per person, this is something else to be thankful for.”
