Would Turkey Be So Popular Without Thanksgiving?

Americans eat a LOT of turkey around the winter holidays, but why? Learn about turkey's festive history and when we eat the most of it in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff Lauren voglebam here. It might come in fourth
on the list of America's top protein choices, but one
day out of the year, nothing else will do. Every
Thanksgiving Day, chicken, beef, and pork all step aside and
make room for their poultry compadre, the turkey. For turkeys, however,

(00:23):
Thanksgiving isn't such a blessing. It's estimated that in seventeen
a whopping forty five million turkeys were consumed for the occasion,
some suffering the fate of being stuffed not only with
stuffing but also with a duck and chicken to create
that poultry profusion called the Urduccan that we discussed a
couple episodes ago. There are a couple competing origin stories
for the Thanksgiving feast, including a couple of meals shared

(00:46):
between Native Americans and European colonists stretching back to the
sixteen hundreds, but it wasn't an official American holiday until
President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed November eighteen sixty three a National
day of Giving thanks. Before that, Thanksgivings days spent in prayer,
thanking God for some fortuitous event or another were periodically
celebrated by New England colonists, but not anything like the

(01:09):
level of the national Thanksgiving festivities we see today. Presidents
following Lincoln annually proclaimed the holiday the last Thursday in November,
until when Franklin D. Roosevelt switched it to the fourth
Thursday in November, not necessarily the last, in an attempt
to kick off the holiday shopping season a touch earlier.
But turkey didn't immediately join the Thanksgiving scene as the

(01:32):
staple centerpiece, and interestingly enough, the turkeys that you see
in the grocery store today don't really resemble the birds
that Pilgrims and Native Americans may or may not have
actually feasted on. Turkeys were eaten by both peoples, but
had always been bred primarily for their striking, dark colored feathers.
That plumage creates tiny pinpricks of pigment in the flesh

(01:53):
that turned off many consumers. Because of this and debates
about which size was most appropriate for both private and
commercial usage, a breeding campaign was conducted in the United
States during the first half of the twentieth century in
search of a better selling bird. The modern result is
the broad breasted white turkey. These turkeys are specters of
their ancestors. They've been bred to be colorless, larger, and

(02:17):
have bigger breasts. Whether you roasted, smoke it, grill it,
or deep fri it, turkey has really wedged itself a
spot on Thanksgiving Day dinner table. Some eighty eight percent
of American families eat turkey on Thanksgiving Day. Back in
ninety nine, Americans only eight about eighteen million turkeys annually.
By nineteen seventy, that number was approximately a hundred and

(02:38):
sixteen million. In seventeen, the number of turkeys raised in
the United States was about two hundred and forty five million,
and that wasn't even a peak year. In nineteen six,
US growers produced a record three hundred and three million turkeys.
But that doesn't seem to be because more people have
been eating turkeys at Thanksgiving. That forty million number mentioned

(03:00):
at the top of the episode has been holding pretty steady.
Back in nine seventy, about fifty of the turkey consumed
the United States was eaten around the holidays. Over the years,
that number has dropped to about meaning people are eating
it throughout the year. We know this because overall turkey
consumption has about doubled in that same time period. In

(03:21):
seventy Americans chowed down on an average of eight pounds
a little more than three and a half kilos of
turkey per person per year. That number has now climbed
to about eighteen pounds. Perhaps all those turkey burgers are
the reason turkey is a year round fixture on many
menus today, and although Thanksgiving is still big business in
the industry, turkey would probably retain its popularity even if

(03:43):
something else like lamb tried to muscle its way into
that special all holiday celebration. Today's episode was written by
Jessica Toothman and produced by Tyler Clay. Brain Stuff is
a production of I Heeart Radios How Stuff Works. For
more in the history of turkeys and Thanksgiving, check out
my other show Savored It's a Wild Ride, and for

(04:06):
more on this and lots of other topics that aren't
just talking turkey, visit our home planet how Stuffworks dot com.
Plus for more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can
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