ABOUT THE DASHBOARD

The dashboard provides the National Average Price, Price per Meal item, Price Point and Price Ranking by State for a 12-person Thanksgiving meal of non-organic turkey, organic turkey and tofu turkey as main choices along with mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, rolls and an apple pie with whipped cream. The total cost is based on 5lb potatoes, 2lb green beans, 1 gal milk, 1 pint whipping cream, 1lb butter, 0.75lb cranberry, 0.5lb onion, 0.125lb celery, 6 eggs, 12 rolls, 2lb sweet potatoes, 2lb apples and the 3 varieties – 16lb whole turkey, 16lb organic turkey, 6lb tofu. The price reflects average ingredient prices for October and November for the given year or selection. Data is available from 10/01/2022. 

HOW TO USE IT

The user selects the year range and the category to explore the National Average Price, Price per Meal item, Price Point and Price Ranking by state for the 12-person Thanksgiving meal. The price is displayed state by state on the U.S. Map. The user can hover over the map to explore the prices by states. The price ranking by state is available as a table. The user can see the ranking by states from the highest price to the lowest price. On selecting a single state on the map, the selected state is highlighted on the map with the average cost displayed. The ranking table shows the price for the selected state. The variation in prices for the distinct categories is available on the Thanksgiving graphic by clicking on the category on the top left. 

VARIABLE DEFINITIONS

Date: Data available from 10/01/2022. 

Categories: Non-Organic, Organic, Vegetarian. 

12-person Thanksgiving Meal components: 5lb potatoes, 2lb green beans, 1 gal milk, 1 pint whipping cream, 1lb butter, 0.75lb cranberry, 0.5lb onion, 0.125lb celery, 6 eggs, 12 rolls, 2lb sweet potatoes, 2lb apples and the 3 varieties – 16lb whole turkey, 16lb organic turkey, 6lb tofu. 

Average Price: Average prices of each component and the national total average price is displayed for the selected state. The national average cost for the meal is displayed for the selected date range and category. 

Price Point by state: Price is calculated for the 12-person meal by state for the selected date range and category. 

Price Ranking by State: From the Highest price to lowest price by state for selected date range and category. 

SOURCES

Center for Food Demand Analysis & Sustainability (CFDAS) at Purdue University, and Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. 

DATA SOURCES

Web scraping via CFDAS and Octoparse; Bread price from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI data for current month.

DASHBOARD AUTHORS

Jinho Jung, Annapurni Subramaniam and Jayson Lusk