7 unbelievable facts about Thanksgiving food consumption in the US (2024)

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Around 46 million turkeys are eaten around Thanksgiving, according to the US Poultry and Egg Association. That's around as many turkeys as the entire population of Spain.

American ate approximately 219 million turkeys in 2011, according to the association, so those 46 million turkeys represent around a fifth of all turkeys eaten for the entire year.

The average commercial turkey sold in grocery stores weighs just over 30 pounds, according to the Wall Street Journal. That means Americans are eating nearly 1.4 billion pounds of turkey during the holiday.

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Americans consume between 2,500 and 4,500 calories at the Thanksgiving table. That's the equivalent of eating between four and eight Big Macs in a single sitting.

While no one literally eats their weight in food on Thanksgiving, many do end up satisfying their entire daily caloric intake from co*cktail hour through dessert on holidays.

The New York Times calculated that most people consumed around 2,500 calories consumed for their Thanksgiving meal, while Calorie Control Council put the number much higher, at 4,500 calories.

For comparison, adult women should eat between 1,600 and 2,400 calories daily, according to the USDA's dietary guidelines. Men should consume between 2,000 and 3,000.

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Campbell's makes 40% of its total sales of cream of mushroom soup for the year leading up to Thanksgiving — and much of it goes into green bean casserole.

Super-charging sales of a staple canned good is simple — if you can engineer an iconic side dish for one of America's major holidays.

The original green bean casserole recipe was designed by Dorcas Reilly in the Campbell's test kitchen in Camden, New Jersey in 1955, according to Smithsonian Magazine. Its six simple ingredients and quick preparation — it can be assembled in just 25 minutes —made it an instant classic.

The dish drives a whopping 40% of the company's cream of mushroom soup sales for the entire year, according to the magazine.

Today, around 20 million Americans serve green bean casserole as a holiday side dish each year, according to the Washington Post. It's also the signature holiday dish of the Midwest, according to statistics blog FiveThirtyEight.

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Americans consume 80 million pounds of cranberries during Thanksgiving, including 5,062,500 gallons of jellied cranberry — enough to fill nearly eight Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Cranberry sauce might not be everybody's favorite side, but Americans still consume 80 million pounds of the fruit during the Thanksgiving holiday, according to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center.

Much of that is in jellied form, with Thanksgiving feasters purchasing over 5 million gallons' worth of jellied cranberry sauce, according to cranberry agricultural cooperative Ocean Spray.

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Shoppers purchase nearly 214 million pounds of potatoes and 50 million pounds of sweet potatoes from US supermarkets in the weeks before Thanksgiving, according to the National Grocers Association.

That's a lot of potatoes.

For comparison, 214 million pounds is slightly heavier than the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, which clocks in around 204 million pounds, according to 24/7 Wall Street. Though potatoes are slightly less seaworthy.

That 214 million also doesn't include the 3 million pounds of prepared mashed potatoes purchased during this time.

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People purchase nearly 19 million ready-made pies ahead of the holiday.

Pumpkin pie is the preferred pie on the Thanksgiving table by far, regardless of which region of the US you live in, according to a 2013 YouGov/HuffPost poll. Apple is the next favorite, except in the South, where pecan pie pulls into second place.

All told, the National Grocers Association says that leading up to Thanksgiving, family and friend alike purchase 18.9 million pies.

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Despite all those extra holiday calories, you probably won't gain much weight from Thanksgiving feasting.

This might be the most mind-blowing fact of them all.

In spite of common wisdom — and myth — that people gain an average of five pounds from Thanksgiving, the truth of holiday weight gain is that it's minute.

People do gain weight during the holidays, but only about eight tenths of a pound, according to a 2015 study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In fact, "despite the fact that more than 85 percent of study subjects made no efforts to control their weight, large weight gains over the winter holiday season were not the norm," the authors of the study wrote.

And that's something to be grateful for.