Supersizing Has Religious Artistic Roots?

Arts & Letters Daily steered me to new research into history's most famous dinner party. "Super-sizing" was not uncommon in the miracles accomplished by Jesus Christ; a few fish and loaves of bread were enough to feed thousands; a potentially wineless wedding feast was suddenly awash in the stuff.

Now a new study of portion expansion puts Jesus once more at the center. You can read a full account of the study on Reuters, headlined “Supersizing the Last Supper”.

Researching the roots of super-sized American fare, brotherly scholars have turned to an unusual source: 52 artists' renderings of the New Testament's Last Supper. Their findings, published in April's International Journal of Obesity, indicate that "serving sizes have been marching heavenward for 1,000 years," as Melissa Healy of the LA Times phrased it.

"I think people assume that increased serving sizes, or 'portion distortion,' is a recent phenomenon," said Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab and author of "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think." "But this research indicates that it's a general trend for at least the last millennium."

To reach their conclusion, Wansink and his brother Craig, a biblical scholar at Virginia Wesleyan College, analyzed 52 depictions of the meal the Wansinks call "history's most famous dinner party" painted between the year 1000 and the year 2000.

Using the size of the diners' heads as a basis for comparison, the Wansinks used computers to compare the sizes of the plates in front of the apostles, the food servings on those plates and the bread on the table. Assuming that heads did not increase in size during the second millennium after the birth of Christ, the researchers used this method to gauge how much serving sizes increased.

And increase they did.

Over the course of the millennium, the Wansinks found that the entrees depicted on the plates laid before Jesus' followers grew by about 70%, and the bread by 23%.

Read the rest of Healy's article in The LA Times.
See also their collection of The Last Supper through the years.

What comes to my mind, other than it's time for lunch?
Everything gets blamed on religion these days!
Also, that second photo makes me think the bread's going to roll off the table! It's already jumped off the plates!