Last Supper gets super-sized with biblical increase in portions

Mar 24, 2010, 1:45 GMT

New York - Representations of the Last Supper, which Jesus shared with his Apostles according to the New Testament, show that food portions have been increasing substantially over time, according to a study published Tuesday.

Research by US brothers Brian and Craig Wansink, published in the International Journal of Obesity, compared the size of the plates, the food portions served on them and the size of pieces of bread for each guest on 50 paintings depicting the Last Supper, using a computer measurement programme (CAD-CAM).

They found that the size of plates increased by about 66 per cent from the 11th to the 20th century, while serving size grew by 69 per cent, and bread sizes were up by 23 per cent.

   Brian Wansink works at the department of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Craig Wansink is a researcher in the Department of Religious Studies at the Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk, Virginia.

They chose the Last Supper - which, according to the Gospels, Jesus shared with his Apostles before his arrest and crucifixion - because it has been depicted over the centuries more than any other scene of a laid table.

If art is taken to reflect life at the time when artists are active, the Wansinks note, then Western societies have long been putting more and more food on their tables. In order to measure the portions in a suitable way, the researchers compared them with the heads of the disciples around the table.

According to this study, the increase in food portions is not a recent phenomenon but is instead a consequence of the growing availability of foodstuffs.