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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey

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Speaker 1: brain Stuff Lauren voglebam here. It might come in fourth

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Speaker 1: on the list of America's top protein choices, but one

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Speaker 1: day out of the year, nothing else will do. Every

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Speaker 1: Thanksgiving Day, chicken, beef, and pork all step aside and

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Speaker 1: make room for their poultry compadre, the turkey. For turkeys, however,

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Speaker 1: Thanksgiving isn't such a blessing. It's estimated that in seventeen

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Speaker 1: a whopping forty five million turkeys were consumed for the occasion,

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Speaker 1: some suffering the fate of being stuffed not only with

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Speaker 1: stuffing but also with a duck and chicken to create

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Speaker 1: that poultry profusion called the Urduccan that we discussed a

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Speaker 1: couple episodes ago. There are a couple competing origin stories

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Speaker 1: for the Thanksgiving feast, including a couple of meals shared

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Speaker 1: between Native Americans and European colonists stretching back to the

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Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, but it wasn't an official American holiday until

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Speaker 1: President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed November eighteen sixty three a National

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Speaker 1: day of Giving thanks. Before that, Thanksgivings days spent in prayer,

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Speaker 1: thanking God for some fortuitous event or another were periodically

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Speaker 1: celebrated by New England colonists, but not anything like the

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Speaker 1: level of the national Thanksgiving festivities we see today. Presidents

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Speaker 1: following Lincoln annually proclaimed the holiday the last Thursday in November,

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Speaker 1: until when Franklin D. Roosevelt switched it to the fourth

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Speaker 1: Thursday in November, not necessarily the last, in an attempt

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Speaker 1: to kick off the holiday shopping season a touch earlier.

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Speaker 1: But turkey didn't immediately join the Thanksgiving scene as the

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Speaker 1: staple centerpiece, and interestingly enough, the turkeys that you see

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Speaker 1: in the grocery store today don't really resemble the birds

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Speaker 1: that Pilgrims and Native Americans may or may not have

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Speaker 1: actually feasted on. Turkeys were eaten by both peoples, but

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Speaker 1: had always been bred primarily for their striking, dark colored feathers.

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Speaker 1: That plumage creates tiny pinpricks of pigment in the flesh

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Speaker 1: that turned off many consumers. Because of this and debates

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Speaker 1: about which size was most appropriate for both private and

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Speaker 1: commercial usage, a breeding campaign was conducted in the United

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Speaker 1: States during the first half of the twentieth century in

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Speaker 1: search of a better selling bird. The modern result is

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Speaker 1: the broad breasted white turkey. These turkeys are specters of

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Speaker 1: their ancestors. They've been bred to be colorless, larger, and

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Speaker 1: have bigger breasts. Whether you roasted, smoke it, grill it,

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Speaker 1: or deep fri it, turkey has really wedged itself a

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Speaker 1: spot on Thanksgiving Day dinner table. Some eighty eight percent

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Speaker 1: of American families eat turkey on Thanksgiving Day. Back in

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Speaker 1: ninety nine, Americans only eight about eighteen million turkeys annually.

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Speaker 1: By nineteen seventy, that number was approximately a hundred and

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Speaker 1: sixteen million. In seventeen, the number of turkeys raised in

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Speaker 1: the United States was about two hundred and forty five million,

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Speaker 1: and that wasn't even a peak year. In nineteen six,

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Speaker 1: US growers produced a record three hundred and three million turkeys.

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Speaker 1: But that doesn't seem to be because more people have

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Speaker 1: been eating turkeys at Thanksgiving. That forty million number mentioned

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Speaker 1: at the top of the episode has been holding pretty steady.

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Speaker 1: Back in nine seventy, about fifty of the turkey consumed

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Speaker 1: the United States was eaten around the holidays. Over the years,

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Speaker 1: that number has dropped to about meaning people are eating

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Speaker 1: it throughout the year. We know this because overall turkey

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Speaker 1: consumption has about doubled in that same time period. In

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Speaker 1: seventy Americans chowed down on an average of eight pounds

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Speaker 1: a little more than three and a half kilos of

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Speaker 1: turkey per person per year. That number has now climbed

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Speaker 1: to about eighteen pounds. Perhaps all those turkey burgers are

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Speaker 1: the reason turkey is a year round fixture on many

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Speaker 1: menus today, and although Thanksgiving is still big business in

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Speaker 1: the industry, turkey would probably retain its popularity even if

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Speaker 1: something else like lamb tried to muscle its way into

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Speaker 1: that special all holiday celebration. Today's episode was written by

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Speaker 1: Jessica Toothman and produced by Tyler Clay. Brain Stuff is

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Speaker 1: a production of I Heeart Radios How Stuff Works. For

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Speaker 1: more in the history of turkeys and Thanksgiving, check out

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Speaker 1: my other show Savored It's a Wild Ride, and for

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Speaker 1: more on this and lots of other topics that aren't

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Speaker 1: just talking turkey, visit our home planet how Stuffworks dot com.

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Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.