From the L.A. Times

The Christian faith holds several acts of "super-sizing" to be miracles accomplished by Jesus Christ -- a handful of fish and loaves of bread expanded to feed thousands; a wedding feast running low on wine suddenly awash in the stuff. Now a new study of portion expansion puts Jesus once more at the center. In a bid to uncover the roots of super-sized American fare, a pair of sibling scholars has turned to an unusual source: 52 artists' renderings of the New Testament's Last Supper. Their findings, published online Tuesday in the International Journal of Obesity, indicate that serving sizes have been marching heavenward for 1,000 years.

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grizzly   |2010-03-24 13:29:45 Interesting article, but I would disagree with its reasoning. Earlier "renderings" were most likely iconographic art, which does not use "realistic" perspective, proportions, or shadows. If you look at an icon of the Entrance into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday), you see that the bystanders are only half to a third the size of Christ and His disciples. Does that mean that Christ was a giant? No. It means that He is the important focus of the icon. Similarly, the plates and their portions of food are not the focus of icons of the Last Supper. Interestingly, while the relative size of the food portions on the plate has grown, the size of the bread that Jesus holds has not grown at the same rate. Could this be because that bread is one of the focal points of the image? I find this likely.

emperorbma   |2010-03-26 22:04:31 ... and now, the phrase we have all been waiting to hear: "Correlation is not causation!"

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