If we had a podium for favorite meats in America…

Chicken would take gold.
Beef would take silver.
Pork would take bronze.

So why do we eat turkey – one of our seemingly least favorite meats – on Thanksgiving?

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“No citizen of the U.S. shall refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving Day.”
– Alexander Hamilton

Ashley Rose Young, a Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History historian – told CNBC that Hamilton was known to be a proponent of turkey. “This was all part of a larger idea of bringing a national sensibility to the United States through consuming the same kinds of foods,” she said, in an interview with “The News with Shepard Smith”. “So turkey, being a bird indigenous and native to North America, really set the American table apart, for example, from the British table.” 

But apart from wanting to be different from our British ancestors, Brittanica shares a couple other reasons why turkey took Thanksgiving gold:

  1. First, the bird was rather plentiful. One expert estimated that there were at least 10 million turkeys in America at the time of European contact. 
  2. Second, turkeys on a family farm were almost always available for slaughter. While live cows and hens were useful as long as they were producing milk and eggs, respectively, turkeys were generally raised only for their meat and thus could be readily killed. 
  3. Third, a single turkey was usually big enough to feed a family.

As American culture has grown “farther away from the farm,” it’s easy to forget just how much turkeys have provided full bellies for large groups of people. So let’s give a round of applause to the turkey – and to Hamilton – this Thanksgiving.