New Poll Reveals One Thanksgiving Dish Is The Most Controversial (2024)

Many things can make or break Thanksgiving dinner. Your turkey could end up drier than the Sahara Desert. Your glass casserole dish filled with stuffing could explode (it happens). The list goes on. But surprisingly, the dealbreaker for most people during Thanksgiving dinner is not having any cranberry sauce.

According to a recent survey conducted by Ocean Spray, a shocking 83% of Americans believe it’s not Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce.

Even though Thursday night football is a favorite pastime during the holidays, 46% of the people surveyed by Ocean Spray say they are as passionate about their cranberry sauce as they are their favorite sports team. And once you start getting into types of cranberry sauce, the fandom goes even deeper. A poll on the Ocean Spray website has things pretty neck and neck, with 60% of cranberry sauce fans representing for Team Canned, and 40% pledging their dedication to Team Homemade. With the cranberry sauce debate heating up, the only way to show up to Thanksgiving dinner this year is with one of these Team Canned or Team Homemade t-shirts.

For the cranberry sauce haters taken aback by these numbers, a completely different Thanksgiving survey tells another story.

A poll created by the website The Vacationer reveals that cranberry sauce is actually the most disliked traditional Thanksgiving food. The side dish received 31.49% of the votes (1,000 people in total were surveyed). Also featured on the list were sweet potatoes or yams (29.22%), green bean casserole (28.04%), turkey (27.74%), and stuffing/dressing (26.75%).