Supersized Last Supper: Christ's final dinner portions 'grow with obesity crisis' - The Telegraph

Supersized Last Supper: Christ's final dinner portions 'grow with obesity crisis' - The Telegraph

Researchers compared the size of food in 52 of the most famous portrayals of Jesus Christ and his disciples at their final meal before his death and found dramatic changes. The size of the main dish grew 69 per cent; the size of the plate, 66 per cent; and the bread, 23 per cent, between the years 1000 and 2000.

"Supersizing" - a term that became popular in the mid-1990s and describes the ability of McDonalds' customers to increase portion sizes - is often considered a modern phenomenon. But "what we see recently may be just a more noticeable part of a very long trend," said Brian Wansink, a food behaviour scientist at Cornell University who conducted the study with his brother Craig, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk, Virgini



"We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history's most famous dinner," he added.

He believes that the wider availability of food has led gradually over the millennium to the phenomenon of serving bigger portions on larger plates.

Computer technology allowed the brothers to scan, rotate and calculate images regardless of their orientation in the paintings, judging the size of the portions against the size of the heads of the disciples.

Details of the study will be published in the April issue of the International Journal of Obesity.

But some questioned the accuracy of the study. The study is "not very meaningful science," said Martin Binks, a behavioural health psychologist and a consultant at Duke University Medical Centre. "We have real life examples of the increase in portion size - all you have to do is look at what's being sold at fast-food restaurants."

A more contemporary test would be to analyse portion sizes in advertisements during American football's Super Bowl, he suggested.