Most U.S. adults surveyed trust store-bought turkey is free of contaminants, despite research finding fecal bacteria in ground turkey

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

WASHINGTON, D.C. ؚ— More than six out of 10 U.S. adults who took part in a Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine/Morning Consult survey last week say they wouldn’t eat turkey contaminated with feces, yet consumer research has shown more than half of store-bought packages of ground turkey tested positive for it.

The poll included 2,183 adults interviewed Nov. 18 to Nov. 20, 82% of whom said they plan to eat turkey for Thanksgiving this year. Of those, 87% said they trust it’ll be free from contaminants, but 65% said if they knew it was contaminated with fecal bacteria, they’d be unlikely to eat it.

In research conducted by Consumer Reports in 2013, more than half of store-bought packages of raw ground turkey meat and patties tested positive for bacteria that indicate fecal contamination. Although ground turkey was tested, whole turkey carcasses, like those purchased for Thanksgiving, can be contaminated with fecal bacteria when the birds are slaughtered. A Physicians Committee study of poultry in 2012 showed similar results. Half of the chicken products marketed by 22 national brands and sold in 15 grocery store chains in 10 major U.S. cities contained chicken feces, lab testing showed.

“While most people say they wouldn’t knowingly eat turkey contaminated with feces,” said Roxanne Becker, MBChB, DipIBLM, with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, “more than half the time, consumers may be unwittingly doing so. If that’s not enough to convince people to keep it off their plates, consider this: E. coli in meat has been linked to urinary tract infections. And while it’s sometimes promoted as a healthy source of protein, a single serving of turkey can contain up to 80 milligrams of cholesterol, a waxy substance that can clog arteries and lead to heart attack or stroke.”

Results of the new survey also show:

*Women, Gen Xers (born 1965-1980), and baby boomers (born 1946-1964) were the least likely to say they’d eat turkey if they knew it was contaminated.

*More than one in four respondents said they’re likely to have a family member or guest at their Thanksgiving table this year who follows a vegan diet.

*Gen Zers (born 1997-2012) and millennials (born 1981-1996) are more likely than Gen Xers and baby boomers to say they’d like to try a vegetarian or vegan alternative to turkey.

The Physicians Committee, a national nonprofit health advocacy group of more than 17,000 doctors, recommends consumers consider a fully plant-based and healthful Thanksgiving and get potentially contaminated turkey, in addition to cholesterol and saturated fat, off their plates.

“This holiday season, forgo the turkey,” Dr. Becker said, “and let vegetables take center stage.”

The Physicians Committee website is a free source of an abundance of healthful, plant-based Thanksgiving recipes, including dishes such as Vegan Sweet Potato Shepherd’s Pie, Zesty Cranberry Sauce, and Pumpkin Pie.

Note to reporters: To arrange an advance interview with Dr. Becker, please contact Kim Kilbride at 202-717-8665, kkilbride@pcrm.org.

Founded in 1985, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is a nonprofit health organization that promotes preventive medicine, conducts clinical research, and encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research and medical training.

 

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Method of Research

Survey

Warning: Don’t miss Thanksgiving dinner, it’s more meaningful than you think

University of Florida

Book the flight home for Thanksgiving, go to that party even though you’re tired, and write that thank you note. You may feel these experiences are not that significant in your busy life today, but according to Erin Westgate, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Florida, you are likely wrong.

Westgate and her team of researchers at the Florida Social Cognition and Emotion Lab recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate the factors that lead people to underestimate the meaningfulness of future life experiences.

“This started a long time ago when I was in grad school where I was talking to another student who asked me if we know how meaningful events will be in the future,” Westgate said. That was in the fall, just before the Thanksgiving holiday.

“Surely people know how significant Thanksgiving will be, right? It’s the poster child for gratitude and meaning,” she said.

After conducting a study with University of Virginia undergraduates, asking them about a week before the holiday how meaningful they expected it would be for them and comparing it to their answers after, the results were surprising. Students were overwhelmingly wrong in their estimate of feelings around the holiday, according to Westgate.

At UF, most of Westgate’s research is largely high impact lab-based, but during the pandemic in 2020, she decided to revisit the findings from her previous work. “We found it once, but can we find it again,” Westgate questioned.

With a larger sample of UF undergrads, Westgate saw the same result. People were clearly underestimating how meaningful their Thanksgiving holidays turned out to be.

“We want to live meaningful lives, we want to do meaningful things and so if we are not realizing that an experience is going to be meaningful, we may be less likely to do it and miss out on these potential sources of meaning in our own lives,” Westgate said.

The base of this new research is understanding that individuals make major decisions on how they anticipate a particular experience will make them feel. From large, life changing decisions such as choosing a career, or starting a family, to participating in holiday events and family gatherings, people make decisions, according to Westgate on choices that foster a sense of purpose and lead to a purposeful and fulfilling life.

The three-year study will use both field and lab experiments to discover why people tend to underestimate life experiences such as career choices, volunteer efforts and even mundane tasks like writing thank you notes and filing taxes. Both positive and negative experiences will be evaluated including the acceptance or denial of medical school applications.

The study will also explore meaningful growth experiences that involve discomfort. Here in particular, if discomfort is involved, individuals may avoid a particular decision that if carried out, could have a significant life impact in developing resilience and potential deep satisfaction of personal sacrifice.

“We don’t make sense of events until they actually happen. We don’t process events until we need to, when they actually happen and not before,” said Westgate. “If we try to make sense of things before they happen, the downside of that is that we are not appreciating how meaningful they will be.”

The goal of the research is to offer ideas on how we can fix this underestimation. When we more fully understand why people are making these mistakes in judgement, we hope we can move on to how we can potentially fix this problem, according to Westgate.

“Sometimes we go into a project, and we know what we are going to find. This is one of those projects that surprised us,” said Westgate. “I love a problem; I love a puzzle, and this was a puzzle I couldn’t ignore.”