Thanksgiving Trivia: Change the Way You Think About Turkey Day

The National Turkey Federation estimates that 91 percent of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving, gobbling down approximately 45 million birds. This year, instead of dining on the ubiquitous Broad-Breasted White (basically, any turkey you'll find at the supermarket), try a heritage breed like Standard Bronze, Bourbon Red, or Narragansett. Yes, they're pricier (up to five times the price of a supermarket variety) but there's a definite ethical tradeoff. Oh, and they're full of flavor, which is more than we can say for a Butterball.

The American Automobile Association (AAA) estimates that 38.4 million Americans traveled 50 miles or more over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in 2009. A little quick math: If all 38.4 million people drove only 50 miles, that's 1.92 billion miles. At 22 miles per gallon, that's a whopping 87 million gallons of gas.

We're not going to tell you not to visit your loved ones, but try to carpool, or squeeze into the hyrbrid for the trip.

Yes, eating organically is usually the right thing to do, but there’s no denying your wallet can take a hit when you swap traditional ingredients for organic versions. How big is the cost disparity? SmartMoney.com calculated that it costs about $100 more to buy all organic ingredients for a typical Thanksgiving feast.

Tofurky isn’t a punchline anymore—the Hood River, Oregon, company sold 275,634 of its tofu-and-wheat-protein roasts in 2007. Though the Thanksgiving meal is what gave the company its buzz, the holiday only accounts for about 18 percent of its annual sales, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Not every Thanksgiving table will have golden brown turkey as its centerpiece. A 2009 study from Vegetarian Times reveals that 3.2 percent of U.S. adults—that's 7.3 million people—follow a vegetarian-based diet. (There are about one million vegans, they found.) Women top this trend: Only 41 percent of vegetarians are male.