This Thanksgiving, most Americans will be stuffing and cooking a Turkey while also having many side dishes for their family members to eat.
Thanksgiving meals nowadays are jam-packed with buttery, highly saturated foods. Much has changed since 1621, and no longer does the table reflect what was eaten in Plymouth many years ago.
It’s common for families to eat turkey, cranberry sauce, potatoes, and pumpkin pie every Thanksgiving, but this was not how the anticipated holiday was always enjoyed.
In 1621 when the Pilgrims and Indians ate together, they had to hunt for their food. Men were sent to find meat to serve, which ended up being wild turkey or ducks, geese, and swans. Nowadays Americans just pop over to their local grocery store to buy turkeys that have been raised on antibiotics and pesticides. Turkeys are also often stuffed with bread based stuffing high in carbohydrates, while the first Thanksgiving’s turkey was stuffed with herbs and onions.
Vegetables were also heavily eaten at the first Thanksgiving, much like today. However when corn was served back then it was “boiled and pounded into a thick corn mush or porridge that was occasionally sweetened with molasses” while today corn is eaten on the cob slabbed in butter (history.com).
Today it’s very common to have a meal consisting of meat and potatoes, but at the first Thanksgiving potatoes weren’t consumed. It was only five decades before the first Thanksgiving that Europeans were introduced to potatoes, and the now popular American food staple wasn’t welcome aboard the Mayflower as the Europeans travelled to Massachusetts.
As the modern day Thanksgiving meal is rounded out with a variety of pies, it’s interesting to note that the first Thanksgiving meal consisted of very little sugar. The sugar supply brought on the Mayflower was either fully depleted or very close to being gone by November of 1621. A way to cut down on calories and fat intake this Thanksgiving would be to reduce the amount of pies baked for consumption. One simple pie of choice is all that’s needed to finish up the holiday meal.
Although there’s an array of differences between the first Thanksgiving meal and the Thanksgiving celebrated today, the concept of giving thanks is still the same. Thanksgiving Day should be a time to appreciate loved ones rather than gorge on food followed by a nap.