Christ, Supersized

Brain and Craig Wansink's latest study has been getting a fair amount of attention. Brain Wansink discusses it over at the Food Channel:

[N]one of the three descriptions of [the Last Supper] in the New Testament say anything about the food. This would mean that an artist's depiction of the food would be sort of a Rorschach food test of what he thought was normal and appropriate for his day.

My brothera religious studies professor at Virginia Wesleyan Collegeand I indexed the sizes of all of the entrees, loaves of bread, and even plates in the 52 most famous Last Supper paintings from the past millennium featured in Last Supper (2000, Phaiden Press), based on the sizes of people's heads. Through plagues and potato famines, the average size of entrees increased by 69 percent, plates by 65 percent, and bread by 23 percent. (The only thing that didn't continually increase with time was the number of wine bottles on the tablethat peaked in the apparently party-happy 16th century.)