Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
This Thanksgiving, be thankful for the low cost of food
This Thanksgiving, be thankful for the low cost of food
Mar 14, 2026 8:58 PM

Your Thanksgiving dinner this year may cost less than a meal at your local fast food restaurant.

According to an informal price survey conducted by theAmerican Farm Bureau Federation(AFBF), the average cost of this year’s Thanksgiving meal for ten people is $49.12—less than $5 per person.

“For the second consecutive year, the overall cost of Thanksgiving dinner has declined,” says AFBF Director of Market Intelligence John Newton. “The cost of the dinner is the lowest since 2013 and second-lowest since 2011. Even as America’s family farmers and ranchers continue to face economic challenges, they mitted to providing a safe, abundant and affordable food supply for consumers at Thanksgiving and throughout the year.”

The AFBF survey shopping list includes turkey, bread stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a veggie tray, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and coffee and milk—all in quantities sufficient to serve a family of 10 with plenty for leftovers.

That same meal a century ago would have been much more expensive. According toBusiness Insider, when adjusted for inflation the same meal for ten would have cost $167.77. One reason is that turkeys are considerably cheaper. A 16-pounder in 1911 prices would cost roughly $110 today (the AFBF says the average turkey today costs $22.38).

So when you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, be sure to include prayer of thank that you don’t have to spend as much of our e on food as your ancestors.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Reflections on ETS Day One
Things were busy here yesterday at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Washington, D.C. With over 1800 registered attendees and 600+ papers being presented, the ideas are flying fast and furious. My paper on Bonhoeffer’s views of church and state went well. A few people asked me to send them copies of the paper, so expect a series of blog posts containing the text ing days (once I clean up the textual apparatus). One highlight of the...
The Good Kind of Skepticism
[UPDATE: Goldberg at the Corner invokes a variation on the skepticism theme: "Anti-clericalism was certainly partly driven from the suspicion that priests and other clergy were preaching their versions of the gospel simply to empower themselves. I’ve long argued that one of the reasons Washington-based reporters are liberal, or statist, is that if the subject they cover is considered hugely important, then they in turn will be considered hugely important." A reader responds with Cui bono.] University of Colorado’s R....
Bonhoeffer on Church and State, Part 2
The following is the text of a paper presented on November 15, 2006 at the Evangelical Theological Society 58th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, which was themed, “Christians in the Public Square.” Part 2 of 3 follows below (series index). Relationship between Church and State It must first be noted that Bonhoeffer’s conception of mandates was a statement about the ontological ordering of God’s rule in the world, not a particular statement about the precise form that rule would or...
Natural Law and Christian Social Thought
Two new and intriguing books from Cambridge University Press have crossed my editorial desk recently. Anticipate reviews to appear in the Journal of Markets & Morality sometime next year; but in the meantime I wanted to give them each a plug. Both draw on the philosophical tradition of the natural law to address contemporary debates in social/political thought. The argument of Christopher Wolfe’s Natural Law Liberalism is summed up in a blurb by Notre Dame law professor Gerard Bradley: “No...
The Art of Freedom
From time to time, e across something that forces me to stop, step back, and marvel at the wonder of human creativity. The movie below is one of those things. Airplanes are monplace that we often take them for granted. Here at Acton, many of my colleagues are regularly catching flights to all sorts of points on the globe, and it isn’t unusual for me to hear some grumbling about the airlines and the annoyances e along with modern air...
Food for Thought: Andrew Sullivan and Retrofitted Christianity
The Hugh Hewitt/Andrew Sullivan kerfuffle has been mentioned a few times on the PowerBlog (here and here, for example), and while the dust has largely settled from that event, the issues that it raised continue to be addressed in various corners of the blogosphere. The most interesting (and mentary that I’ve read on Sullivan and his new book is by the Rev. Dr. Mark Roberts, who serves as Senior Pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church in Irvine, California. Roberts’ critique is...
Catholic Social Teaching and Health Care
Susan Stabile, a law professor at St. John’s University and a contributor to Mirror of Justice, analyzes the current state of health coverage in the United States in light of Catholic social teaching in this article. I have quibbles here and there along the way, but on the whole the approach and the conclusions are sound. She is probably right that Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) have limited value, though my reasoning would be a little different. I would say that,...
Bonhoeffer on Church and State, Part 1
The following is the text of a paper presented on November 15, 2006 at the Evangelical Theological Society 58th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, which was themed, “Christians in the Public Square.” Part 1 of 3 follows below (series index). Introduction Ever since his untimely death in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and work have gone through a variety of appraisals and reappraisals in the succeeding scholarship. The fragmentary and partial nature of his Ethics manuscripts, as well as the attention...
Milton Friedman, R.I.P
December 10, 1976: My science is a er, the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel having been established only in 1968 by the Central Bank of Sweden to celebrate its tercentenary. That circumstance does, I admit, leave me with something of a conflict of interest. As some of you may know, my monetary studies have led me to the conclusion that central banks could profitably be replaced puters geared to provide a steady rate of growth in...
Reflections on ETS Day Two
Got back from the annual ETS meeting yesterday and finally have a chance to sit down and summarize the events of the last couple days. Thursday morning was highlighted by parallel sessions. I attended one on Melanchthon and his shifting view of free will, in addition to papers on economic imagery in the Scriptures and the prospects for natural law theory as a strategy for political discourse. The latter was part of a session that revolved around evangelicals and natural...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved