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Turkeys Are Twice as Big as They Were in 1960 (theatlantic.com)
Alexis Madrigal, writing for The Atlantic: A turkey today is not the turkey of yesteryear. For decades, animal breeders have been transforming the genomes of turkeys to make them grow larger. Since 1960, the weight of turkeys has gone up about a quarter of a pound each year. The average weight of a turkey has gone from 15.1 pounds in 1960 to 31.1 pounds in 2017. And most of that change has been genetic. In one study of a representative strain of turkeys, poultry researchers fed the same diet to turkeys from 2003 and to a control group of turkeys that were representative of that strain's genetic pool from 1966. On average, the 2003 females grew to 33 pounds. Their 1966 cousins only got to 16.3 pounds.
twice as heavy as 1960, thought this was article about obese americans
I'd rather eat chicken. Turkey is the _worst_ of the domesticated birds.
Also: Duckhen is much much better than TurDuckHen.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The phrase "transforming the genome," although accurate, may be a little misleading to the non-science public. What this means is "selective breeding," not "genetic engineering."
It is interesting to compare farm-bred turkeys to the wild ones. We do get wild turkeys in our backyard-- they are quite impressive birds, not at all similar to the big-but-dumb coop-raised turkeys.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
And yet, they still taste like cardboard. Can't someone breed a tastier turkey?
I've just never liked roasted/baked turkey.
Maybe its because I don't generally drink and eat at the same time, I don't wash my food down....so, ANY roast turkey I've ever had, tastes mostly like dried cardboard to me.
I started my own tradition decades ago, each year I do a standing Rib Roast.
I found a wonderful Prime Grade bone-on rib roast at Costco this year, $11.99/lb.
I"m gonna slow rotisserie it on the Big Green Egg, low temps, maybe with a couple of hickory chunks in there for a tiny bit of smoke flavor.
My motto has long been "The only Turkey at my house on Thanksgiving, is 101 Proof!!""
Come to think of it....I don't get tired of my leftovers either.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
https://www.israel21c.org/turkey-poop-is-a-promising-renewable-energy-source/
10% of U.S. adults were classified as obese during the 1950s. In 2011 to 2012, however, the CDC reported approximately 35%. Source: https://www.livestrong.com/art...
News at 11.
...that's a space station! No, wait... that's no space station, that's a 2017-strain American Turkey! Change course!
Can't, it's got us stuck in its massive gravitational field! Well, it won't take ME without a fight!
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Trump is huge
A criminal, Keptin... a product of late 20th century genetic engineering!
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
since I've always hated the stuff, but modern fruit is just awful. Oranges especially. They grow to the size of grapefruits and as a result the tree can't get enough sugar or flavor to them. They taste like balls of fiber and wax. I stopped buying them. I can by the various breed of tangerines I guess but it's just not the same. I miss real oranges.
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We are prospering too much!
Seriously I can easily image JFK, Eisenhower, or one of those guys promising that in the future Turkeys would be larger.
They're larger in part because our better economy carries that demand.
My dick is Plank constant times bigger than it was in 1960.
Just in case you're wondering why after cooking your meat has about 10% of its original size, feast your eyes on this.
In other words, how big is your turkey after roasting for a few hours? Is it still bigger? Or did it "sweat"?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I work for a chicken processor. Most of the chickens these days are gigantic compared to the old ones. If you look at the breasts you get from a Tyson chicken at the store, you'll notice their gigantic. Now compare those to a breast you'd get at a Popeye's or a KFC, and you'll notice the latter are significantly smaller. The distinction in the industry is "big birds" vs. "small birds", though it's actually a pretty fluid range.
The big birds of today have gotten ridiculously large, to the point where some can barely support their own weight. Our company tends to produce more smaller birds and through our employee sales program I've had the opportunity to try a selection of our products and I have to say, the smaller birds taste SO much better!!!
We've spent a lot of time breeding our food to meet some industry goal, such as more efficient feed to meat conversion, better visual appeal, better harvests (bigger chickens, redder and more consistently colored tomatoes, heartier wheat, etc) but the cost frequently seems to come in terms of taste and/or health.
Example; We feed cows corn because it fattens them up faster and makes them produce more milk and/or meat. But it also makes the meat and dairy less healthy.
We need to undo some of this damage we've done to our food supply.
While I can only base this on my experience, it seems that the larger the turkey the weaker the flavor seems to be. I wonder if much like fruit, the turkey has been bred only for size and the flavor has been ignored. Sure you get 30+ pounds of turkey, but it might as well be tofu for all the flavor it has. Maybe that's why they're all injected with 'flavor enhancers'. The turkeys we get from the local farmer around here are smaller (15-20 pounds on average) but they taste so much better. We did a side by side comparison one year and couldn't believe the difference. Of course you pay for that flavor, but for once a year it's well worth it.
So it's not as "cool" as Jurassic Park, but hey... baby steps.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Think of it as evolution in action.
Can you please post weight measurements in other units, as Europeans have a hard time with Pounds.
For instance, what would those turkeys weight in stones ?
I for one welcome our huge turkey overlords!
Same thing with chicken. For a long time during my 30's I had the impression that chicken didn't taste like it used to, but I dismissed it as the 'good old days' syndrome. Then I visited a town on the savannas in Guyana and ate free-range chickens that didn't look as though they'd been cross-bred with beach balls. Wings, legs, and breasts were much smaller than I'd grown used to, but they tasted wonderful - just like I remember chicken tasting in my early years.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Birds descend from dinosaurs... somewhere in their genes it is still written how to grow big..how to grow teeth... let's keep poking at those genes and see what happens
Every good Christian knows that this is not true. It would be proof of natural evolution, but the Bible already gives us proof that God created everything "as is". There is no such thing as evolution, but it guided or unguided.
How large an animal is at slaughter has little to do with how large the animal can get and more to do with how large the producer selects the animal to meet the customer demand.
I raise pigs on pasture. A full grown pig is 900 to 1,800 lbs. I do not sell my hogs at full size. Rather I raise them to a weight that fits my customers needs.
For standard whole pig family orders that is about 250 lbs live weight.
For roaster pigs it varies from as little as about 20 lbs to 300 lbs with the typical oven roaster being about 30 to 40 lbs and the typical spit roaster being about 80 lbs.
For whole market pigs that I cut to deliver to stores and restaurants the size is more like 300 to 400 lbs.
Back to turkeys, when you raise them you can harvest them at 20 lbs, 30 lbs, 40 lbs or what ever size you like to fit you or your customer's needs.
Yes, we have been doing selective breeding for millennia to improve how feed efficient animals are, muscling, etc, but the selection of size has more do do with market demand and is done simply by raising the animal and harvesting it at the desired size.
If you would like a 1,000 lb pig just let me know. Realize they cost a lot more than the standard 250 lb pigs as they take a lot longer to get to that size and thus a lot more feed too.
Turkey's Are Twice as Big as They Were in 1960. Ottoman empire phoenix rises from the BBQ ashes.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's all that matters!
They're all GMO's
Or it's been lost from their genes.
Personally I think we should start with the teeth and big clawed hands.
Maybe start with fast running flightless birds.
Next step, velociraptors!
you might want to consider not eating the American variety of cancer-turkey next time the holiday calls for it.
Is it true or an urban myth that ovens in the US grew to keep up with the turkeys?
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Whereas US males went from an average 166.3 pounds in 1960 to 195.7 pounds in 2014, a mere 17.6% gain.
Come on humans. Keep up!
Requiem for the American Dream
I tried to inject a turkey - but it wouldn't stay on the spoon!
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Yeah, so we're twice as big as we used to be!
Evolution would be an unguided process of natural selection.
This is more like "intelligent design" - an intelligence (in this case ranchers/farmers) is guiding this process through selective breeding to a particular goal, a big plump juicy bird that will bring nice big juicy profits.
Tasty, tasty intelligent design....
Incidentally, this is all happening without affecting the normal wild turkeys that are available all around the country in their natural form AND it highlights the folly of bans on hunting/owning/killing/eating other species: When people can legally own, breed, kill, eat and sell a creature, there is a profit motive to make more of them and there are no shortages; when people may not legally do these things, the animals can become rare or even extinct because too few care enough to invest enough in protecting/breeding them. There is no shortage of cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, etc but big game are nearly all endangered. Those who point out that this rule did not work for whales and tuna are forgetting that those creatures are essentially un-ownable because they roam the vast and un-owned oceans.
Well I have it on good authority you can smoke a Crawdad. Why not a turkey?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dSz_WB_Va4
The trick is to roll it in good quality parchment, or so I've heard!