YOUR DINNER PLATE SIZE TELLS A STORY

Dinner plates have gotten bigger in the past 1,000 years; so have servings of food. A researcher analyzed the plate and food sizes in the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting of The Last Supper and found that today's plates are 66 percent larger than they were in the late 1400s (when Leonardo painted The Last Supper), and that today's food portions are 69 percent larger. The last plate size change we remember was from inches to centimeters, when dinner plates were made a fraction of an inch larger and became too large for a standard 1960s kitchen cabinet. Check size if you are dating vintage plates. Many patterns have been made continuously for years; old dishes are measured in inches and newer ones in centimeters.