Thanksgiving: Challenges to Thanksgiving

Not everyone has been happy with the turkey as the central focus of the Thanksgiving dinner. Perhaps the most prominent vegetarian during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was John Harvey Kellogg, a Seventh-Day Adventist who managed a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. Kellogg was a dominant force in culinary Americana at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1894 his wife, Ella Kellogg, published a totally vegetarian menu for Thanksgiving. It featured “mock turkey,” made from nonmeat ingredients but shaped in the form of a turkey. More recently groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have used Thanksgiving to gain visibility for their beliefs. PETA has sponsored petitions and published leaflets encouraging a turkey-free Thanksgiving under the slogan “Give turkeys something to be thankful for!” To counteract the Butterball Thanksgiving talk line for answering questions about proper techniques of cooking turkey, PETA has encouraged its members to call the hotline and tell operators there is no proper way to kill and cook turkeys. Many vegetarians continue to celebrate Thanksgiving, substituting tofu-based products, such as “Tofurkey,” for the traditional meat dishes. This practice has been met with derision by some vegetarians, who believe that not even turkey substitutes should be used.