Are You Smart?; Meals Get Bigger in 52 "Last Supper" Works
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And that's why you should vote for me, Elle Woods future lawyer for the class of 2004.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Elle Woods. Welcome to Harvard.</s>ROBERTS: Applying for college using the videotape. It's not just for the "Legally Blond" anymore. In fact, at least one highly respected university welcomes the practice. But is a video the best way to judge an applicant's intelligence?</s>CHETRY: Well, this week in our special series, "Are You Smart," Alina Cho takes an in depth look at all aspects of intelligence. She joins us to examine the kinds of smarts a student needs to get into college these days.</s>ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Listen Elle Woods, you know she was blond but she wasn't dumb. Turned out she did very well at Harvard Law School, you know, in the movie.</s>CHETRY: Right but the implication was she got in because they saw her in a bikini in the video. So is that what is going on here with one university?</s>CHO: Well let's hope not guys, you know, good morning. You know we all do know that the college admissions process is super competitive. You do have to be smart, good grades, high S.A.T.S, but if you're applying to Tufts University, a personal video can help, too. It's actually part of the application. So, does a YouTube video measure a different kind of smart? You be the judge.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What you want Tuft is what you want --</s>CHO (voice-over): What does this, this, and this have to do with getting into college?</s>EVAN RENAUD, TUFTS APPLICANT: I hope the admissions officers will notice it, be, like, oh, hey, this guy's really cool.</s>CHO: Tufts University near Boston is now accepting personal videos as part of the application process, among the first the nation to do so, not to replace essays, grades, or S.A.T.S, but as a supplement. The videos are not required, but students are, well, getting into it.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do the right thing. Accept this Israeli. I'll bring the good like Barnum & Bailey.</s>CHO: Already, almost 1,000 students are taking part out of the 15,000 applications they received. Some on YouTube have been viewed by thousands. Demonstrating creativity and animation, wilderness survival skills.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm making a light weight reusable oven out of a cardboard box, some turkey pans and some tin foil.</s>CHO: And in Rhaina Cohen's case a twist on a familiar phrase -- walk a mile in my shoes. In her case, literally.</s>RHAINA COHEN, TUFTS APPLICANT: I wasn't trying to come off as, you know, Imelda Marcos and say I have 3,000 shoe, but I just wanted to show a bit of who I am. I think that's what the goal is with applications in general, that these are humans looking at files filled with so many papers and trying to discern who are you, would I want to meet you, would I be intrigued by you?</s>CHO (on camera): What does the YouTube video provide for an admissions officer that the application doesn't?</s>MARILEE JONES, FORMER M.I.T. DEAN OF ADMINISTRATIONS: Well, you really get to see these applicants in their adolescent best. You see the cleverness, and you see their goofiness, and you see who they are as human beings and this is the point.</s>CHO: Marilee Jones former dean of admissions at M.I.T., calls the personal videos refreshing.</s>JONES: It's very easy to fall in love with someone in one minute. It's also very easy to get turned off. So what these students are doing by providing these videos this year is a very high wire act. They're taking huge risk, which is why I love them.</s>CHO (voice-over): Showing a kind of intellectual chutzpa to go along with the other credentials. Can you tell me range what you got on the S.A.T.?</s>COHEN: Out of 2400, I got 2300.</s>CHO (on camera): 2300 out of 2400 on your S.A.T.? Oh, my gosh. You didn't need that video.</s>CHO (voice-over): For others, a place where playing with fire can be a ticket to college.</s>RENAUD: Everyone else probably talks about community service or being a varsity athlete, and so I thought fire</s>CHO (on camera): He did burn his stomach twice, though, we should mention. Tufts says it's still committed --</s>CHETRY: Don't bring those things to the dorms.</s>CHO: That's right. You know we should mention guys that Tufts says it is still committed to the essay writing portion because they say that, you know, for the application process, it is important still to be able to write elegantly, but these videos really are a way to show that they are media savvy, too. You know, in this YouTube age, in this twitter age, in this Facebook age, it's something that they feel they have to do, right. But you know one dean of admissions I spoke to said something really, really interesting. She said, listen, this first year that this is being allowed into Tufts, it's great because there's some authenticity, but these things quickly get gamed. So in a couple years, two, three years, maybe they are going to -- some of the more wealthy kids will hire Hollywood directors and soon they'll be showing at Sundance.</s>CHETRY: Yes exactly.</s>CHO: So there is a danger in that, but right now, you know, listen, it does showa different side, a different kind of intelligence, a creative emotional intelligence that doesn't come out on paper.</s>CHETRY: It will be interesting to check back in with Tufts and see how many of these thousands of applicants that did the video or the YouTube got accepted.</s>CHO: Well we will now.</s>CHETRY: And then also you know compared to the regular --</s>CHO: No I mean that's a good idea, we will do this. But it is certainly the way of the future. You know you will be seeing more colleges do this.</s>ROBERTS: You know maybe "Back To The Future." How about a personal interview?</s>CHO: Well, this is the new form of the personal interview is what they're saying. You're right. Now, listen...</s>ROBERTS: Because as you said, you can game the system.</s>CHO: That's right, that's right. You can.</s>CHETRY: Interesting.</s>CHO: Pros and cons.</s>CHETRY: Alina, thanks so much.</s>CHO: You bet.</s>CHETRY: Well, half past the hour. Time for a look at our top stories. President Obama will soon hit the road selling the health care reform law even as the Senate works to fix it. Right now, Republicans are offering a number of amendments to the reconciliation bill that could make things politically difficult for Democrats, including one amendment that would prohibit taxpayer dollars from being spent on medications like Viagra for sex offenders.</s>ROBERTS: The Pentagon said to be considering a more humane enforcement of its Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, which prevents gays from serving openly in the military. CNN has just learned that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expected to announce the changes tomorrow. Gates has supported President Obama's call for a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.</s>CHETRY: Well, a dramatic pirate battle off the coast of Somalia. Officials say that one pirate was killed during a shoot-out with private security guards hired to protect that cargo ship. The remaining pirates took off. They were eventually captured by a Spanish navy vessel.</s>ROBERTS: Well, has the meal in the Last Supper reached biblical proportions? Two brothers, both college professors, think so. Using computer technology, they compared the size of the Jesus and his disciples' heads to the size of their food.</s>CHETRY: And they found that in more than 50 of the paintings over the last 1,000 years, the food actually got bigger and bigger. In fact, the main dish growing by 70 percent. The study was published in the April's "International Journal of Obesity." Interesting stuff. And we brought one of the co-authors of the study on to talk about it today -- Craig Wansink. He's a professor of Religious Study also at Virginia Wesleyan College. Thanks for being with us this morning, professor.</s>CRAIAG WANSINK, VIRGINIA WESLEYAN COLLEGE PROFESSOR: It's great to be here. Thank you.</s>CHETRY: And also we should say your brother couldn't be here because he's on a book tour.</s>WANSINK: In China.</s>CHETRY: There you go. Well, I want to ask you guys about this because you studied 52 different paintings, depictions of the Last Supper over a thousand-year period. What was the idea behind this?</s>WANSINK: You know, the original idea, this is sort of a collaboration between two brothers. He studied -- he studied economics. I study religious studies. We just started looking at the paintings for some other reasons, for art historical reasons. And then gradually, we began to see within the paintings sizes. We began to look at food and see how that changed over time, how sometimes you see different foods because of cultural reasons, maybe historical or social reasons. But gradually began to see that the food sizes began to grow. The plate sizes began to grow. What started as a late-night observation and just -- I was going to say between two brothers whose kids had finally gone to bed and we were just talking. We didn't know it would turn into an article.</s>ROBERTS: It is very, very intriguing. What was your frame of reference for determining how the food size had grown?</s>WANSINK: Well, it's difficult. There are so many different variables like it's sort of like shooting skeet on a roller coaster. You have to contain some variables. You have to make them dependent. And so what we did was took the --- took the head sizes on the paintings and used those and compared them to the size of the food. And that was one way for us to make sure that there wasn't too much variance. Otherwise, it would absolutely be comparing apples and oranges.</s>CHETRY: Right. So, it's really interesting. Let's just put up a few graphics so people can see in the findings of your study. The entrees increased by 69 percent in size. The plates themselves actually grew by 66 percent in size. Bread, one of the meals there, grew 23 percent in size. So, is this portion distortion, as some may call it, imitating art or vice versa?</s>WANSINK: No. It's -- yes, it's a difficult thing to say. I mean, clearly coming out of the Middle Age or coming out of the Dark Ages, you can see more -- you're going to see more and more food on the table. And I think that gradually becomes idealized. Larger portions come to be seen as good in general. You know, when we look at the paintings, we have to be --- we have to be sensitive to the art itself, but what's fascinating is you see a clear trajectory, the size of the food, the size of the platters keeps getting larger and larger.</s>ROBERTS: Of course, Craig, the most famous rendition of the Last Supper is Da Vinci's. Let's put that up quickly. And just give us an idea of what this describes in terms of the amount of food on the table.</s>WANSINK: I was going to say, Leonardo's painting really was the starting --- the starting place for the study because it got us --- it got us interested in looking at the plate, looking at this in general. It stands out because of proportions. It stands out because of the disciples. Probably doesn't stand out as much in terms of food. One of the interesting points about is that there's eel on the table. Eel garnished with orange slices. And what I think is pretty fascinating about that is, if we can use the term "Iron Chef" here, that was basically an "Iron Chef" food in the time of Leonardo. So people did all sorts of creative things with it. So it was included in the painting perhaps for that reason, really reflecting the time.</s>ROBERTS: OK. Let's get your three comparisons here that you wanted to take a look at. One is a Duccio from 1311, a Holbein from 1524 and a Crespi from 1624. Tell us about the evolutions and the comparisons here.</s>WANSINK: Again, these are --- these are fairly random shots. For the Duccio, the table is sparse. You see the plates are small, the bread is pretty small. If you look at the Holbein, with something like this, we had a challenge because there's clearly an empty platter there. We can't really tell, but we can tell something about the size of the platter, how much it grew. When we finally get to Crespi, boy, it looks like a buffet. There's lots of food. There's lots of platters. Anyone who wants to see this as a Passover meal or a satyr or anything like that, that bread is not unleavened. That is puffy, puffy bread. And so, these are just some actually pretty random images that show the evolution of what we began to see. Initially, we saw images just like this and began to wonder about it. And then when we --- then we looked at a number of images, we just began to see the trend --- we began to see a clear trend time and time again.</s>CHETRY: It's also interesting, I mean, you know, from an anthropological standpoint. What does it tell us about the role and the meaning of food in our culture and how that's changed over the years?</s>WANSINK: No, no. Absolutely. I think my brother did a study. He wrote a book called "Mindless Eating." In there, he talks about portion distortion, talks about what's really happened particularly in the last 20 years. But what he wanted to see here, what we wanted to see was whether or not we could see anything historically. I think what ends up happening after a while is what we see as an ideal in these paintings is attainable today, and so as a result, sometimes people embrace maybe what should only be an artistic ideal.</s>ROBERTS: Well, I tell you, it's a unique study. No question about it. And obviously proving that the super-sizing of our food is nothing new. Craig Wansink, great to talk to you this morning. Thanks so much.</s>WANSINK: Thank you very much.</s>CHETRY: Congratulations for getting that study published. Neat stuff. Well, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, much more ahead. It's 37 minutes past the hour.