1. The Libby's plant near Morton, Ill., makes 85% of the world's canned pumpkin, enough for over 90 million pumpkin pies each year.
2. Libby’s even has its own special hybrid variety of pumpkin, which is actually looks more like squash.
3. Almost three quarters of Americans serve store bought cranberry sauce rather than homemade at Thanksgiving.
4. About 200 cranberries are used to produce each can of jellied cranberry sauce.
5. Americans consume 5,062,500 gallons of jellied cranberry sauce every holiday season — enough to fill the entirety of the country's largest water park, twice.
6. This year Butterball is hiring its first-ever male turkey helpline spokesman via Facebook contest.
7. About half of all Americans cook their Thanksgiving birds with actual stuffing inside — and they really shouldn't.
8. In 1966, threatened by the growing demand for instant mashed potatoes, a group of potato growers hired a PR firm to help improve their image.
9. Instant mashed potatoes are used by food stylists as fake ice cream.
Ice cream advertisements must feature actual ice cream, but instant mashed potatoes are often used instead of real ice cream in an ad for, say, chocolate syrup. (This trick has been used in movies as well. Back in 1962, the prop master of The Music Man ordered 64 gallons of pink mashed potatoes for one scene alone.) As for ice cream sundaes, they’re often concocted from mashed potatoes, or lard, with motor oil on top.
10. This is a marshmallow plant. In 2000 B.C., ancient Egyptians discovered that its sap could be combined with honey to make candy.
11. Marshmallows are now made with gelatin instead of anything remotely connected to the marshmallow plant and dyed a uniform bright white.
The dye is artificial color Blue 1.
12. Pie was banned in 17th Century England.
13. Of people surveyed last year, 17% admitted they had tried at least once to pass off a store-bought pie as homemade.
