The Surprising Origin of Thanksgiving Foods

One of the reasons we eat what we do for Thanksgiving is to celebrate the uniquely American foods that the Pilgrims discovered when they came to Massachusetts and learned to grow with the help of Native Americans. At their first Thanksgiving feast, they ate lots of seafood and venison, but what we concentrate on for the holiday are the foods that Europeans didn't have at the time: turkey, cranberries, corn, potatoes, pumpkin, pecans, etc.

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Joe Hanson of It's Okay To Be Smart looks at those American foods and how they were cultivated for centuries before Europeans arrived. American foods are something worth celebrating!