How Americans Spend $2 Billion On Food For Thanksgiving | Business Insider

Key Concepts

• Cranberry Harvesting: Wet harvest method, flooding bogs, floating berries, specialized machinery (harrow, boom, berry pump), receiving stations, processing plants.
• Cranberry Products: Juice, Craisins (dried cranberries), sauce.
• Cheese Production: Cooperative model, milk pasteurization, starter culture, rennet, curdling, whey separation, salting, aging, cheese grading.
• Vanilla Cultivation: Hand-pollination, orchid bloom, vanilla bean growth, historical cultivation, price volatility, theft, cooperatives, processing stages (sorting, washing, hot water treatment, drying, curing, massaging).
• Turkey Farming: Pasture-raised vs. barn-raised, antibiotic-free, humane slaughter, processing, labor costs, market challenges, corporate consolidation, deceptive marketing.
• Apple Breeding: Genetic research, breeding for specific traits (crispness, storage, taste), market disruption, investment, marketing strategies.
• Butter Making: Traditional malakage technique, hand-kneading, salting, flavored butters, shaping.
• Artistic Cake Creation: Realistic sculpting, edible materials, shock value, artistic background, custom orders.

Cranberry Production: From Bog to Table

Thanksgiving feasts in the US involve significant quantities of food, including an estimated 160 million pounds of butter, 80 million pounds of cranberries, and 46 million turkeys. Cranberries, known for their bright, tangy flavor, are a key component of the holiday meal. Ocean Spray farmers are the leading producers in North America, facing a tight six-week window to harvest 100 billion berries from the bog to grocery store shelves.

The process begins in mid-September with the wet harvest. Bogs, typically dry fields where cranberries grow in sand, peat, gravel, and clay, are flooded with about a foot of water. Cranberries, containing four air pockets, float to the surface when detached from their vines. Farmers use a specialized cranberry harvesting machine with a harrow to dislodge the berries. Once floating, farmers use a boom to corral them. This wet harvest method is both environmentally friendly and efficient, allowing Allison's family to harvest up to 10 acres per day, working for six to eight weeks in various weather conditions.

The corralled berries are then gently guided into a berry pump and transported to a berry washer truck. This machine cleans the fruit, removing debris before it's transported to a receiving station. Trucks line up to unload their cargo, where the berries undergo further cleaning. Approximately 1.5 million barrels of cranberries are processed annually, with manufacturing plants taking a year to process all the harvested fruit.

At the processing plant, berries are frozen to break down their cellular structure, facilitating juice extraction. This frozen fruit is then spiked to break it up, followed by slicing, defrosting, and juice extraction. The extracted juice is concentrated and then sent to another facility for reconstitution into cranberry juice, with about 4,400 cranberries going into a typical bottle. The leftover berries are processed into Craisins (dried cranberries) through a 210-foot dryer with three stages. For cranberry sauce, Ocean Spray's first product from 1930, berries are ground into a puree with sweeteners, with nearly 60 million cans expected to be sold for the holidays. The packaging of finished products is largely automated by robots. Ocean Spray offers over 250 SKUs (product types) globally, with 50% exported to Europe.

Cabot Creamery: A Century of Vermont Cheddar

Mac and cheese is another Thanksgiving staple, with Vermont's Cabot Creamery producing 130 million pounds of cheese annually. Founded in 1919 by 94 farmers in Cabot, Vermont, as a cooperative, Cabot Creamery still operates on this model, with over 800 family farms across New England now owning the brand. This cooperative structure ensures farmers own the brand and receive 100% of the profits.

Farmers like Clara, a third-generation dairy farmer at Fairmont in East Montpelier, Vermont, know their milk's destination. Their milk primarily becomes hard cheeses and butter, while Cabot handles the manufacturing, marketing, and sales. Clara's family milks nearly 1,500 Holstein cows across two farms, shipping about 5 million gallons of milk annually. While some farms use robotic milkers, traditional milking machines are also employed.

Milk is collected and stored in tanks until Cabot trucks arrive, up to three times a day. At the Cabot plant, milk is pasteurized and then poured into vats where a starter culture of bacteria and rennet (a special enzyme) are added to initiate curdling. Steel wires break down the curds, separating them from the liquid whey. After cooking, the whey is drained, and salt is added to reduce acidity. Specialty flavors can be introduced at this stage. The curds are then pressed into 40 or 60 lb blocks and sent to an aging room for maturation in a temperature-controlled environment.

Cheese graders, like Gina and Ted, sample cheese daily, evaluating up to 150 samples. They assess flavor, saltiness, and moisture content. For cheddar, as it ages, flavors become more intense. Graders determine when a cheese block is ready for processing into 8 oz blocks. On average, Cabot has close to 70 million pounds of cheese in inventory.

Vanilla Production in Madagascar: The Volatile "Green Gold"

Vanilla, one of the world's most expensive spices, is primarily produced in Madagascar, accounting for 80% of the global supply. Farmers must hand-pollinate 40 million orchids that bloom for only one day a year to produce vanilla beans. Despite its value, Madagascar remains one of the poorest countries, facing price volatility, inflation, and theft.

Vanilla is an orchid vine that thrives in Madagascar's rainforest environment. It is not native to the island, originating from Central and South America where indigenous insects, like orchid bees, are essential for pollination. After its introduction to Europe in the 1520s, European countries struggled to cultivate vanilla due to the absence of these bees. In 1841, a 12-year-old boy named Edmund Albus discovered that the orchid could self-pollinate by manually moving a membrane. France later cultivated vanilla in Madagascar, where conditions were ideal.

Today, hand-pollination is still practiced, with farmers like Razafina Salama pollinating up to 500 orchids daily. It takes about nine months for a pod to grow. The price of vanilla beans has skyrocketed due to rising demand and crop destruction by cyclones, reaching nearly $600 per kilo in 2018. This high price attracts thieves, leading farmers to arm themselves and patrol their fields. In 2018, an estimated 10% of the harvest was lost to theft. Some farmers pick beans prematurely to avoid theft, compromising quality.

To combat theft and middlemen exploitation, farmers are increasingly selling to cooperatives like Sahanala. Sahanala checks bean quality, brands them, and pays farmers directly, cutting out middlemen and offering a more consistent price. Razafina Salama earns about $17 per kilo of raw green vanilla from Sahanala. Sahanala processes the beans, employing thousands. The processing involves sorting by quality, washing, a hot water treatment to release vanillin, drying, and curing for 15-30 days. The beans are then massaged to release oils and fragrance.

Cured beans are significantly more valuable. Sahanala earns $250 per kilo for cured vanilla, a 1300% increase from the raw bean price. However, price volatility remains a major issue, with farmers earning as little as $2 a day in low-price years. Many grow other crops to supplement income. The Malagasy government introduced a minimum base price of $250 per kilo for exporters in 2020 to stabilize prices, but global companies are opting for cheaper alternatives or synthetic vanilla. Cooperatives like Sahanala aim to provide a guaranteed minimum income for their farmers, but challenges like theft, government instability, and shifting demand create uncertainty. Despite these challenges, increasing global demand for vanilla offers a positive outlook if stability can be achieved.

Gunthorp Farms: The True Cost of Pastured Turkeys

The Thanksgiving turkey is a centerpiece, with an estimated 40 million birds slaughtered annually in the US for the holiday. Gunthorp Farms in Indiana raises turkeys using a pasture-based system, contrasting with the typical barn-raised method. Greg Gunthorp's family has practiced this for four generations, raising turkeys on non-GMO grain without antibiotics. These birds have access to the outdoors, allowing them to forage, see the sun, and breathe fresh air.

Catching and processing these birds for Thanksgiving is labor-intensive, requiring about 10 people over three days. Gunthorp's turkeys cost up to three times more than mass-produced supermarket turkeys, selling for up to $6 per pound due to the higher labor costs. The farm's processing plant is audited and certified for humane raising and slaughter. Turkeys are stunned with electricity, then de-feathered by a plucker, organs are removed, and they are rapidly chilled in ice baths to ensure shelf life.

Gunthorp Farms faces significant market challenges. While turkey constitutes 15% of their business, they recently abandoned their pastured chicken operation, which previously accounted for half their revenue. Wholesale buyers preferred cheaper, mass-produced chickens, forcing Greg to make the difficult decision to cease production. He fears turkeys will follow the same path. Losing a large retail buyer last Thanksgiving led to hundreds of unsold turkeys being frozen and later cut into parts, which was less profitable.

The market is flooded with deceptive marketing claims. For example, Honeysuckle White, Shady Brook Farms, and Honest Turkey are all brands of Cargill, a large food conglomerate. Advocacy groups filed a deceptive advertising complaint against Cargill, which the company denies. Cargill states its turkeys are raised by independent family farmers, often through contract farming. This model involves large companies owning the birds and feed, controlling production methods. Former contract farmers like Craig Watts have spoken out about poor conditions and lack of independence. Purdue Farms, another large company, claims to have commitments to animal care and farmer relationships, but former contract farmers have reported issues.

Despite these challenges, Greg Gunthorp remains committed to his farming methods, aiming to sell all his turkeys this year. He finds reward in knowing customers care about how their food is raised and processed.

Cosmic Crisp: Engineering the Perfect Apple

Nearly half of US households serve apple pie at Thanksgiving, and a new contender, the Cosmic Crisp, developed by scientists at Washington State University, aims to disrupt the apple industry. Launched on December 1, 2019, after two decades of research and a $500 million investment, it was the largest apple launch in American history.

In the late 1990s, Washington's apple industry was struggling due to declining popularity of the Red Delicious apple, known for its bland taste and mealy texture. Farmers lost significant revenue. Bruce Barrett began breeding a new apple with the beauty of the Red Delicious but with a sweet taste and a satisfying crunch. The goal was to create an apple that could last at least 12 months, significantly longer than the Red Delicious, to maintain quality throughout the year.

The Cosmic Crisp's parent varieties are the Honeycrisp for its crispness and the Enterprise for its storage qualities. Thousands of trials were conducted, with seeds growing into seedlings, then trees, producing fruit by year four. By 2008, the unnamed selection showed promising characteristics. Over the next 11 years, extensive testing evaluated its size, shape, color, crunchiness, juiciness, and tartness. Ripeness is tested using iodine, which binds to starch; as the apple ripens, starch converts to sugar. A fully purple or black stain indicates immaturity.

With hundreds of existing apple varieties, the Cosmic Crisp required a substantial budget, a large industry, and a superior product to succeed. It boasts a galactic-looking skin and is expected to become a dominant force. By the end of 2019, Washington farmers had planted 12,000 acres of Cosmic Crisp trees. $10.5 million was invested in marketing. The variety is exclusively available to Washington-based growers for the first 10 years. The Cosmic Crisp is positioned as a premium apple, selling for $3 to $5 per pound, more than double the price of varieties like Gala. In 2020, it won the Good Housekeeping Institute's Healthy Snack of the Year Award.

Bodia Butter: A Taste of Brittany's Tradition

In Brittany, France, Jean Bour revives a 19th-century technique called malakage to produce artisanal butter. This method uses a large wooden wheel to knead the butter, giving it a unique texture and a more "romantic" production process. While standard butter production involves 50 kg blocks and centrifuges, Bodia butter is flattened and worked by hand.

The malakage process, dating back to the late 19th century, was initially used to rework different butters. At Bodia, it helps achieve the desired texture. The process is physically demanding, with 50 kg of butter requiring significant effort. Fine salt is added to remove residual water. Bodia also produces flavored butters, including chili, buckwheat, and vanilla. Their signature Breton butter is described as fresh, sweet, and reminiscent of the seaside.

After churning, the butter is shaped using a specialized butter cutter. The shaping and portioning are done entirely by hand, with custom orders for chefs and individual consumers.

Sarah Hardy: The Art of Shockingly Realistic Cakes

Sarah Hardy creates hyper-realistic cakes and chocolates, often with a creepy and lifelike aesthetic. Her Thanksgiving turkey cake, made from four layers of sponge with bright pink buttercream icing for a realistic skin tone, is an example of her work. Hardy, an artist with a background in art school and creating wax figures for museums, transitioned to cake making after becoming pregnant and seeking a less chemically intensive craft.

Her sculpted cakes evolved into increasingly "weird" creations, aiming to provide an experience beyond taste, offering surprise and joy. Her inspirations come from natural history, internal organs, and historical artifacts. The creation of these intricate cakes can take days and cost over $600. Hardy's work often plays with perception, making viewers question what they are looking at.

For the turkey cake, marzipan dots are applied to mimic plucked skin, followed by a thin sheet of marzipan for fine details. Food dye is used for painting, and a syrup glaze gives it a shiny appearance. Hardy sells her work through her website and offers tutorials for her turkey cake.