POV: This Thanksgiving, Think of the Turkeys (2024)

FAQs

What does the turkey symbolize during Thanksgiving? ›

The bird was as symbolic as the holiday itself: a sign of a nation's great wealth and ability to provide for its citizens. That symbol has carried on to this day, according to Karen Davis, president of the organization United Poultry Concerns and author of a book on the tradition of Thanksgiving.

Some historians say the early settlers were inspired by the queen's actions and roasted a turkey instead of a goose. The wild turkey is a native bird of North America. As a result, Benjamin Franklin claimed this made the turkey a more suitable national bird for the United States than the bald eagle.

Turkeys undergo mental and physical suffering before they are slaughtered for human consumption. Due to their size they have trouble breathing and walking normally. Turkeys are not given enough room to roam and this contributes to their suffering.

The main dish at the table of the first Thanksgiving was likely not one dish at all. While turkey may have been present (wild turkeys were common to the colonial area), no documentary evidence exists that turkey itself was served.

Thanksgiving-type celebrations were common at the turn of the 19th century with many opting to put a turkey on the table instead of slaughtering a useful animal like a hen or cow that was producing other needed products, according to Britannica. Turkeys at the time, and still today, were raised to be meat birds.

As Thanksgiving Day rose in popularity during the 1800s, so too did the turkey. By 1857, turkey had become part of the traditional dinner in New England. The domestic turkey eaten now is very different from the wild turkey known to the Pilgrims, Hamilton, and Franklin.

According to the History Channel, the first Thanksgiving celebration is believed to have occurred in 1621. The story, historically told from the pilgrim's perspective, is that Plymouth colonists from England shared a meal with the indigenous Wampanoag people to give thanks for a successful fall harvest.

How turkeys got so big. Much of a turkey's rapid growth is in its breast, where the white meat comes from. Since the 1930s, American farmers have been cross-breeding turkeys to get bigger and bigger breasts.

Depending on the plants species and time of year, turkeys will eat roots, bulbs, stems, buds, leaves, flowers, fruits and seeds. In search of protein, they move about the woods like a pack of velociraptors, thrashing up the leaf litter and eating anything that moves.

Is Thanksgiving turkey bad for you? ›

Turkey is healthy white meat overall, but all meats contain fat. One 3-ounce serving of turkey contains one gram of saturated fat. That's 6% of your recommended daily intake. To keep your fat intake from turkey at manageable levels, limit your portion size to the recommended single serving.

Noises and Other Disturbances

As a result of sharing space with hawks, raccoons and the occasional badger, turkeys have developed an instinctive avoidance of loud noises. You can take advantage of this aversion by making some kind of noisemaker that will be loud enough to spook the birds from across the lawn.

An estimated 46 million turkeys are eaten each year as part of Thanksgiving meals, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That's about 21% of the around 216.5 million turkeys produced in the U.S. each year.

The wishbone is found attached to the breast meat in the turkey's chest. After the meat has been removed and the wishbone has had a chance to become dry and brittle, two people each take one end of the bone, make a wish, and pull. Whoever ends up with the larger part of the bone gets their wish!

California's early settlers didn't have wild turkey as an option for their Thanksgiving feasts, since the birds were not native to the region. Wild turkeys were first introduced into California in 1877, by private ranchers on Santa Cruz Island for game hunting.

The author aims to examine how the act of consuming turkey during Thanksgiving has become a symbol of American identity and a way for immigrants to assimilate into American culture.

Turkey meat has been eaten by indigenous peoples from Mexico, Central America, and the southern tier of the United States since antiquity. In the 15th century, Spanish conquistadores took Aztec turkeys back to Europe. Turkey was eaten in as early as the 16th century in England.