The first answer from hariseldon59 is pretty much spot on. In fact the commercially grown Thanksgiving birds are so breast-heavy that they can barely walk around normally by the time they're ready for harvest. I once read that the fortunate national bird that gets pardoned each year by the US president is sent to a kind of petting zoo to live out its life which is typically only a few weeks anyway. Both the ceremonial turkey and the reserve bird that is brought along to the White House in case the first one drops dead before the ceremony are quite close to their full life expectancy by the holiday.
These animals are like Franken-birds that scarcely resemble real wild turkeys like Arthur Carlson would have assumed. It still would have been a dopey idea to toss those out of a chopper though. So, in short, turkeys really can fly, but Thanksgiving turkeys are a bit of a science project on legs that have been retarded from flight to keep their white meat 'white' and artificially generous in proportion.
Here's the science if you need it:
https://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/meat/INT-what-meat-color.html
Eeek!!! I'm getting dressed.
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