Good news! 
 
 The cost of the classic Thanksgiving Day dinner for 10 people has fallen to $49.04 this year, down from $49.48 in 2012. 
 
 This is according to an informal survey conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation. LPL Financial's Jeffrey Kleintop pointed us this. 
 
 From the AFBF's release: 
 
 The AFBF survey shopping list includes turkey, bread stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a relish tray of carrots and celery, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and beverages of coffee and milk, all in quantities sufficient to serve a family of 10. There is also plenty for leftovers. 
 
 The big ticket item – a 16-pound turkey – came in at $21.76 this year. That was roughly $1.36 per pound, a decrease of about 3 cents per pound, or a total of 47 cents per whole turkey, compared to 2012. The whole bird was the biggest contributor to the final total, showing the largest price decrease compared to last year. 
 
 The 2013 Thanksgiving dinner cost is lower than the 2011 cost of $49.20. 
 
 "There's no inflation on the table," joked Kleintop. ||||| Evan Sung for The New York Times 
 
 The commonly cited statistic is that the average American will consume more than 4,500 calories on Thanksgiving Day alone. That’s according to the Calorie Control Council, which represents the people who bring you diet foods. After thinking about how much 4,500 calories really is, I was skeptical of the claim. I decided to create a gluttonous Thanksgiving feast of traditional foods and count the calories along the way (with the help of several online calorie counters). Here’s what I found. 
 
 Let’s start piling our plate with a generous 6-ounce serving of turkey, with the skin of course. Since dark meat has more calories, we’ll go with 4 ounces of dark meat (206 calories) and 2 ounces of white meat (93 calories). Did I mention we’re eating the crispy skin? Don’t forget the stuffing. I picked a not-so-healthy sausage stuffing (310 calories). Since it’s a holiday, let’s throw caution to the wind and eat lots of starchy, buttery foods. A dinner roll with butter (310 calories) plus two kinds of potatoes – a big serving of mashed sweet-potato casserole made with butter, brown sugar and topped with marshmallows (divide your casserole dish into 8 servings and it will be 300 calories each) plus a half-cup of mashed potatoes with butter and gravy (140 calories). 
 
 You’re not getting full are you? Let’s add 2/3 cup green bean casserole (110 calories), a dollop of cranberry sauce (about 15 calories), and roasted brussels sprouts because our mother made us eat them (83 calories). And since we don’t want to hurt anybody's feelings, we’ll take one slice each of pumpkin pie (316 calories) and pecan pie (503 calories) with generous dollops of homemade whipped cream on each slice (100 calories). 
 
 O.K., now I feel sick. How much have I eaten? The grand total is: 2,486 calories. 
 
 The point is I had to work pretty hard to finding enough servings of fat-laden, sugary foods to get to about 2,500 calories. Throw in a few glasses of wine, breakfast and some snacks and it’s certainly possible to binge your way to 4,500 calories on Thanksgiving Day, but I’m not convinced it’s as common as the diet food companies would like us to believe. 
 
 For one thing most people would have a hard time eating that much. After about 1,500 calories in one sitting, the gut releases a hormone that causes nausea. Average stomach capacity is about 8 cups, although it can range from 4 to 12. 
 
 The average meal takes 1 to 3 hours to leave the stomach. But a large meal can take 8 to 12 hours, depending on the quantity and fat content. Eating too much can lead to indigestion (painful) and flatulence (you probably won’t be invited back). Another reason to pace yourself and avoid a gluttonous binge is that big meals can raise the risk for heart attack, blood clots and gallbladder problems and make you a dangerous, drowsy driver on the way home. Bon Appetit! ||||| When Americans sit down with their families for Thanksgiving dinner, most of us will probably gorge ourselves on the same traditional Thanksgiving menu, with turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and pumpkin pie taking up the most real estate on our plates. How did these dishes become the national "what you eat on Thanksgiving" options, though? 
 
 The pilgrims may not have had turkey 
 
 Turkey may not have been on the menu at the 1621 celebration by the pilgrims of Plymouth that is considered the first Thanksgiving (though historians and fans of Virginia's Berkeley Plantation might quibble with the "First" part). There were definitely wild turkeys in the Plymouth area, as colonist William Bradford noted in his journal. However, the best existing account of the pilgrims' harvest feast comes from colonist Edward Winslow, author of Mourt's Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Winslow's first-hand account of the first Thanksgiving included no explicit mention of turkey. He does, however, mention the pilgrims gathering "wild fowl" for the meal, although that could just as likely have meant ducks or geese. 
 
 So why do we chow down on turkey, then? 
 
 It helps to know a bit about the history of Thanksgiving. While the idea of giving thanks and celebrating the harvest was popular in certain parts of the country, it was by no means an annual national holiday. Presidents would occasionally declare a Thanksgiving Day celebration, but the holiday hadn't completely caught on nationwide. Many of these early celebrations included turkey; Alexander Hamilton once remarked that, "No citizen of the U.S. shall refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving Day." 
 
 When Bradford's journals were reprinted in 1856 after being lost for a century, they found a receptive audience with advocates who wanted Thanksgiving turned into a national holiday. Since Bradford wrote of how the colonists had hunted wild turkeys during the autumn of 1621 and since turkey is a uniquely American (and scrumptious) bird, it gained traction as the Thanksgiving meal of choice for Americans after Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863. 
 
 Moreover, there were pragmatic reasons for eating turkey rather than, say, chicken at a feast like Thanksgiving. The birds are large enough that they can feed a table full of hungry family members, and unlike chickens or cows, they didn't serve much utilitarian purpose like laying eggs or making milk. Unlike pork, turkey wasn't so common that it didn't seem like a suitable choice for a special occasion, either. An interesting 2007 piece in Slate discussed these reasons for turkey's prominence, but also made another intriguing point. The publication of A Christmas Carol in 1843 may have helped force along the turkey's cause as a holiday delicacy when Scrooge magnanimously sends the Cratchit family a Christmas turkey. 
 
 There was no cranberry sauce, either 
 
 While the cranberries the pilgrims needed were probably easy to come by, making cranberry sauce requires sugar. Sugar was a rare luxury at the time of the first Thanksgiving, so while revelers may have eaten cranberries, it's unlikely that the feast featured the tasty sauce. What's more, it's not even entirely clear that cranberry sauce had been invented yet. It's not until 1663 that visitors to the area started commenting on a sweet sauce made of boiled cranberries that accompanied meat. There's the same problem with potatoes. Neither sweet potatoes nor white potatoes were available to the colonists in 1621, so the pilgrims definitely didn't feast on everyone's favorite tubers. 
 
 They did have plenty of venison, though 
 
 Winslow mentions in his writings that the governor sent out a party of four men to do some fowling for the feast, but the pilgrims and Wampanoag also enjoyed five deer as part of their feasting. The meat supposedly arrived at the celebration as a gift from the Wampanoag king Massasoit. On top of the venison, other meats probably included lots of fish and shellfish, which were staples of the pilgrims' diets. So if you want to wolf down a lobster or some oysters in lieu of turkey on Thursday, nobody can fault you for being historically inaccurate. 
 
 And pumpkin pie didn't cap things off 
 
 It may be the flagship dessert at modern Thanksgiving dinners, but pumpkin pie didn't make an appearance at the first Thanksgiving. The pilgrims probably lacked the butter and flour needed to make a pie crust, and it's not clear that they even had an oven in which they could have baked a pumpkin pie. That doesn't mean pumpkins weren't available for the meal, though; they were probably served after being baked in the coals of a fire or stewed. Pumpkin pie became a popular dish on 17th-century American tables, though, and it might have shown up for Thanksgiving as early as the 1623 celebration of the holiday. 
 
 
 
 More from Mental Floss...
– Thanksgiving dinner will cost you a little less this year—44 cents less to be exact—according to a 34-state survey from the American Farm Bureau Federation, picked up by Business Insider. A 10-person feast with turkey and all the trimmings—including stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls, veggies, cranberries, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream—plus enough for leftovers, costs about $49.04 this year, a drop from 2012's $49.48. At about $5 per serving, it's "an excellent value for consumers," AFBF's president said. The most expensive buy is of course the turkey, which averages $1.36 per pound—down three cents from last year—or $21.76 for a 16-pounder. Newser points out that wine and other alcoholic libations aren't included in the grand total. Don't have time to dress a turkey? And more penny-wise news: Assuming you're not the host, driving to Thanksgiving dinner will be a little cheaper, too: The Los Angeles Times reports national gas prices are down 16 cents per gallon over last year, to an average $3.27 a gallon.