Think increases in portion size are a modern-day phenomenon? They’ve actually been growing for the last 1,000 years — at least if you look at depictions of the New Testament’s Last Supper.
That’s what duo of brothers — one a psychologist and the other a biblical scholar — decided to do, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Brian and Craig Wansink examined 52 artists’ renderings painted between 1000 and 2000 A.D. of the famous scene. They compared the size of the plates and food in the paintings to the head size of the apostles, which presumably didn’t change.
The found that the size of the entrees ballooned 70% and the bread by nearly a quarter.
“I think people assume that increased serving sizes, or ‘portion distortion,’ is a recent phenomenon,” Brian Wansink told the LA Times. “But this research indicates that it’s a general trend for at least the last millennium.”
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