A 2025 Top Ten List For Thanksgiving

Through a top ten list for Thanksgiving, behavioral economics can explain our holiday meal.

Thanksgiving Top Ten List

10. Defaults

• As a default, the traditional Thanksgiving menu is easier to select than a new meal.

  9.  Confirmation Bias

• Confirming our bias, the meal tastes good because we expect it to be good.

  8. Choice Architecture

• The “architecture” of the menu skyrockets our calorie consumption to over 3,000 calories.

  7. Diminishing Marginal Utility

• The first bites are the best bites. After that we get less extra pleasure.

  6. Temporal Discounting

• Thanksgiving dinner gives us considerable short-term pleasure. But there is a long-term cost.

From here, traditional economic ideas can take over:

  5. Future Expectations 

• Some of us demand less during dinner because we look forward to leftovers.

  4. Complementary Goods

• Perfect with turkey, cranberry sauce and stuffing have huge demand.

   3. Cost

• It takes approximately 1.6 hours of work for someone that earns an average U.S. wage of $35.33 (BLS/private payrolls) to pay $55.18 for this year’s Thanksgiving meal for 10.

   2. Inflation

• Displaying success in the war against inflation, at $55.18, dinner for 10 is down from last year’s $58.08. However, a closer look reveals that the price of five items rose while six went down. (I added the arrows to display their price trajectory.)

   1. The Invisible Hand

• Through the market system, the invisible hand makes sure that we produce and distribute many millions of Thanksgiving birds. At nearly 32 million for 2024, the number of turkeys that come from Minnesota make it our top turkey producing state.

Our Bottom Line: Happy Thanksgiving!

Enjoy the meal.

(And please, let us know what you would include on your Thanksgiving economic top ten list.)

Today’s post is an updated version from last year.

My sources: Payroll data came from the BLS while of course the American Farm Bureau,  the USDA, and the National Turkey Federation also had handy statistics.