Being Fat Not Our Fault?

McDonald's is not the only place where food is supersized.

According to NPR.org, the food in The Last Supper painting has been supersized over time. A computer program examined 52 paintings of The Last Supper from the last 1,000 years and found that entree sizes grew by 69 percent and bread size grew by 23 percent. 

(Read the article to see pictures of The Last Supper supersize over the years.)

The findings suggest bigger portion sizes and bigger plates have been developing gradually, said Brian Wansink, co-author of the study and author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. 

So it's not our fault then that we're so fat, right? If the people before us kept increasing plate size, we can't help it that we were born into a time where food was served 69 percent larger than before. 

Maybe. 

I suspect that at some point, we have to take some blame for obesity being an epidemic. At some point, we have to take initiative to exercise, eat healthier, and (gasp) eat less. 

I'm always surprised when I hear that a serving size of meat, fish or poultry should be the same size as the palm of your hand (not including your fingers). Six dice is about a serving of cheese and the tip of your thumb is one teaspoon of peanut butter. My mindset demonstrates exactly how blown out of proportion my thoughts  on portion sizes (and probably most others) are. 

"The lat thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food," Wansink said, "We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history's most famous dinner." 

Here's hoping that in another 1,000 years, portion sizes and plate sizes decrease and don't increase another 69 percent. 

Or else we might end up like the humans in Wall-E.

Why I'm Going to Blog

I'm dedicating this blog post to my friend Bryan who has been urging me to blog for quite some time now. So Bryan, here's hoping that I'll live up to your musings.

Today in class, Editor in Chief Mara Shalhoup and Food & Drink Editor Besha Rodell from Creative Loafing gave advice about how our class, as magazine students, could break into the industry and get editors to give us one of those ever coveted Jobs.

Major skills I need to possess by the time I graduate:

1) Have intelligent, preferably witty conversation with the public using different types of social media tools while promoting magazine I'm working for

2) Be able to come up with great story ideas

3) Have a speciality of interest that I'm an expert on

4) Have several different kinds of skills (New Media/computer skills, copyediting skills, etc.)

Basically, I need to be awesome.

They also looked really favorably on blogging. Besha even said she preferred looking at blogs to see writing style and personality versus looking through clips and resumes when hiring interns and freelancers. So, I've decided to revitalize my old new media blog, where I posted interesting new media technologies each week. But I also want to add sections about books, films and probably anything else that strikes my fancy.

Blogging Goals:

1) Develop a personality for my blog

2) Find what topics I'm interested in writing about

3) Write wittier

Cheers!

P.S. My fourth blogging goal is to come up with a wittier signoff. I'm thinking something along the lines of "Good night and good luck" or "Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered."...something like that.