This may be the most holy week for Christians, but a recent study of the last supper has seen local church officials take conflicting views on Jesus' last meal.

This week is known as holy week in Christian tradition. It started with Palm Sunday and then the crucifixion on Good Friday. Then it culminates with the resurrection on Easter Sunday. But This Thursday, which can be called Holy or Maundy Thursday to Christians is the anniversary of the Last Supper; this was the meal that began Jesus' last night of freedom. Father Dwight Baker, Associate Pastor of NEK Catholic said, "As far as that meal that's all we know that is read upon, as Catholic Christians we believe that was the intuition of the Eucharist. Dr. William Schutter a St. Johnsbury Pastor said, "And I certainly would concur with the father on that. It is just it is hard to imagine that a Passover lamb was not the central factor that was really constituted if everything else."

A huge number of artists have depicted the last supper as described in the bible for over a millennium, but artists from different countries and different time periods have depicted it a little differently each times. The International Journal of Obesity, a division of Nature Publishing Group recently published a study of paintings made since the year 2001, why? To see if Jesus really has been eating more.  

With obesity such a concern these days, the Journal wanted to see if the trend of food overabundance and overeating is a recent development, of if it has been a gradual trend since Jesus' time.

Arguable the most well known sole meal in history and with such an abundance of depictions the Journal chose the Last Supper to find circumstance evidence one way or another. They found what they expected and that was that the meal and portion sizes change picture to picture and there is a noticeable trend. According to the mathematical models over the past one thousand years but most notably in the past five hundred the amount of food that Jesus and the disciples have been eating has increased. Father Baker also said, "We live in a culture where there is fast food and we eat too much. We have larger portions of food now and maybe that's why the artist interpreted it in that way."

The findings are far from concrete, but the Journal believes the indication is clear; the road to obesity has been a long time coming. Reverend William Schutter believes that rather then the dietary mentality of artists over time and it does in fact have a lot to do with a growing awareness of the importance of the word supper and a promise from god to supply need.