Bring Out the Stretchy Pants, It’s Almost Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving is upon us, bringing with it good will, full bellies and awkward family interactions. With green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, turkey and pie on the mind, we figured it’d be fun to dive into some facts and statistics, so you can be the smartest person around the table come feast day.
+ We all may be familiar with the history of Thanksgiving and the multi-day feast that started it all, but how much do you really know about the details? Let’s find out! (Full disclosure, GN.W. scored 50% on this one . . . how’d you do?)
+ Courtesy of the US Census Bureau, we’ve got a bunch of great statistical tidbits to share:
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There are nearly 120 million households across the nation in 2017 “—potential stops for Thanksgiving dinner.”
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We’ve got 23.8 million English descendants in the US, roughly 636,000 living in Massachusetts, who “could very well be descendants of the Plymouth colonists who participated in . . . one of the first Thanksgivings.”
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In 2010, census data recorded 6,500 members of the Wampanoag Native American tribal grouping, “roughly half of whom resided in Massachusetts. The Wampanoag attended the first Thanksgiving, playing a lead role in the historic event, and were essential to the survival of the colonists during the newcomers’ first year.”
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Roughly 244 million turkeys were “forecasted” as being raised in the US during 2016.
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The US imported $25.8 million in live turkeys in 2017, “with 99.9 percent of them coming from Canada and the remaining from France.” Bon appétit, eh!?
+ Apparently, a typical holiday dinner can contain up to 3,000 calories, and that doesn’t account for appetizers and drinks, meaning folks can expect to consume “more than 2 1/4 times the average daily calorie intake and almost 3 1/2 times the fat”.
+ And if you’re a fellow pumpkin-pie aficionado, I’ve gotta break some news to you. Take it as you will, but if you’re making pie from a can you’re actually making an ‘assorted squash pie’, because “Food & Wine reports that cans of pumpkin puree—even those that advertise ‘100 percent pumpkin’—are actually made of a range of different squashes . . . While it’s a little unsettling to find out your favorite pie is not what it seems, pumpkin puree brands have a good reason for their deception. While pumpkins are a quintessential part of autumn, they don’t actually taste that great.”
+ All that food is the culprit of after-meal doldrums, not tryptophan. So the next time someone tries to dodge the dishes because of tryptophan-induced narcolepsy, you’ll know what’s really going on.
To travel, or not to travel. That is the question for many.
+ For folks staying in Durango, the Fairgrounds will serve host to the Durango Community Thanksgiving Dinner, which provides a free (donations encouraged) Thanksgiving meal on Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. If you’re looking for an opportunity to pay it forward, you can consider donating or volunteering to that great cause.
+ For those ‘getting out of Dodge’, the US industry trade organization for airlines projects that as many as 28.5 million passengers will take to the air “during the 12-day Thanksgiving air-travel period, up 3 percent from 2016.” I, for one, will be hitting the roads with nearly 51 million other drivers traveling for the holiday.
+ For drivers, the worst travel dates are in: Tuesday, Nov. 21 and Monday, Nov. 27 will be among the busiest according to Waze, a popular traffic app. Their live map could be a useful tool, beyond CDOT, for keeping apprised of the situation.
And finally, I’ve just gotta say how thankful I am for all of you wonderful readers! We’ll be taking a week off from the GN.W., but the regularly scheduled program returns on Sunday, December 3.
Until then, happy Thanksgiving from ours to yours!
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