If you cooked Thanksgiving dinner in the 1970s, you probably remember watching every penny at the grocery store. Prices felt high back then. And according to government records, they were, at least relative to what people were earning.
The folks at Mental Floos have put together the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which tracked actual store prices throughout that decade. What they show might surprise you.
The Turkey Cost You More Than You Remember
In November 1975, turkey at retail stores averaged 77.4 cents a pound. A 16-pound bird, the standard size the American Farm Bureau Federation uses in its annual survey, ran about $12.38. That sounds like nothing today. But adjusted for inflation, that same turkey would cost you roughly $72.58 in today’s money.
Two years earlier, in 1973, grocery prices had jumped about 21 percent in a single year. That year, turkey averaged 89.6 cents a pound. In today’s dollars, a 16-pounder from 1973 would set you back around $101.
Compare that to the Farm Bureau’s 2025 survey, which found a 16-pound frozen turkey averaging $21.50, or $1.34 a pound.
Here is the number that really puts it in perspective. In November 1975, production and nonsupervisory workers averaged $4.86 an hour. That $12.38 turkey cost about two and a half hours of wages. In November 2025, the same workers averaged $31.85 an hour and a $21.50 turkey took only about 40 minutes of pay to cover.
The Milk Cost More, Too
A gallon of whole milk was no bargain either. According to USDA records, retail fluid milk averaged 78.5 cents per half-gallon in 1975. That works out to about $1.57 a gallon, which, in today’s dollars, is around $9.46. The Farm Bureau found whole milk averaging $3.73 a gallon in 2025.
What the Whole Holiday Meal Actually Cost
Nobody was tallying the full cost of a Thanksgiving feast in the 1970s. The Farm Bureau’s well-known annual survey did not start until 1986, when it priced a complete meal for ten people at $28.74. In today’s dollars, that comes to about $84.
The 2025 version of that same meal cost $55.18, about $5.52 per person. That is down 5 percent from 2024 and well below the record high of $64.05 set in 2022. The turkey alone accounted for 39 percent of the total bill.
Groceries overall have actually gotten relatively more affordable over the past 50 years. Between November 1975 and November 2025, the Consumer Price Index for all items rose about 5.9 times. The index for food eaten at home rose about five times, meaning food prices grew a little more slowly than everything else.
So the next time someone says Thanksgiving was cheaper back in the day, you can set the record straight. The turkey your family gathered around in the 1970s cost a whole lot more of your paycheck than the one on the table today.
