Turkeys

#food - More than 45 million turkeys are cooked and eaten in the USA at Thanksgiving, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture: that's nearly two whole turkeys on every table in America.

American per capita consumption of turkeys has soared from 8.3 pounds in 1975 to 18.5 pounds in 1997. Ten years later, the number has dropped slightly in 2007 to 17.5 pounds.

In 2007, more than 260 million turkeys were raised with an average liveweight per bird of 28 pounds with nearly 6 billion pounds of turkey processed. By contrast, in 1970, only 105 million birds were raised with an average liveweight of 17 pounds and 1.5 billion pounds processed.

Source: New York Times, US Department of Agriculture