46 million whole turkeys can be found on the Thanksgiving dinner tables of American families at Thanksgiving, according to the National Turkey Federation. With inflation rates spiking up the price of a warm Thanksgiving meal, it was even estimated by Finder that Thanksgiving would cost $1.1 billion in the U.S. in 2022. But the absurd spending is not the primary concern — what I am concerned about is that 88% of American households are eating the wrong bird at Thanksgiving.

Chicken is the obvious go-to bird for any holiday feast because it’s cheaper than turkey. Going back to $1.1 billion spent on turkey, by swapping the millions of Thanksgiving dinner plates from turkey (which went at $2.28 per pound according to a 2022 study) with chicken (which went for only $1.9 per pound), families would be saving millions of dollars. With inflation rates only looking at a limitless ceiling, now is the best time to eat the hot chicken before all that money goes down the drain. 

But the more pressing issue with turkey for Thanksgiving dinners is that it is incredibly difficult to cook well. Because of its large size and lack of fat, cooking turkey until the innermost meat temperature is safe for consumption often means chewing on very dry turkey meat once it’s out of the oven. The difference in cooking rates between red and white meat parts also creates a headache in cooking a perfect turkey.

The biggest question: why do we even need such a big turkey on our tables? Stuffing, cranberry sauce, cornbread, and other foods will also fill up our plates, meaning most of the turkey that took so long to cook eventually becomes leftover anyways. The already dry, rather bland turkey meat will only degrade in quality the more time it spends in the fridge, which eventually finds its way into the trash. Imagine how much waste that would be.

Please do yourself favor and seriously consider changing to chicken this Thanksgiving!