As millions of Americans fire up their ovens for the ritual Thanksgiving feast, we thought we’d run a few numbers through the ol’ WeFeedback Calculator just to put things in perspective.

The US National Turkey Federation estimates that approximately 45 million turkeys are eaten each year at Thanksgiving.

Estimates for the average cost of a Thanksgiving turkey vary widely, but for the sake of argument, lets go with this figure from an article in How Stuff Works which puts the cost of a 16lb bird at US $19.09. (Like many other foods, Thanksgiving turkeys have jumped in price in recent years)

According to this admittedly rough calculation, that means Americans will spend around $859 million on turkey this Thanksgiving.

The WeFeedback calculator says that the same amount of money would provide 3.4 billion meals to the world’s hungry. That’s more than three meals for every hungry person on Earth.

So why not add a few places at your dinner table this Thanksgiving and throw down for an extra turkey? Just one 16 pounder would feed 76 hungry kids.

Happy Thanksgiving America!