Why Does Jesus Appear In Food? Religion & Science Face Off

An Ohio woman’s over the moon after seeing what she describes as Jesus’ face in her pistachio nut. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Ohio, a man claims Jesus and his mother Mary both revealed themselves in a piece of candy. Why do people keep seeing Jesus in their food, and what would he want us to do about it?

Jesus and his famous family have a habit of “materializing” in human food. From Christ’s 1977 cameo in a tortilla to Mary’s miraculous 2005 appearance in a pizza pan, there’s a long litany of modern instances in which the holy brood “revealed” themselves in our edibles. To the devout, these cases are nothing less than divine intervention. To others they’re nothing more than optical illusions.

Scientists refer to this phenomenon as pareidolia, in which banal images are given great significance. Whether it’s transforming a cloud into a lamb, or a piece of dry bread into Jesus, pareidolia’s considered nothing more than a mental projection.

When cloaked in the sacred, pareidolia can be called “simulacra,” or similarity, in which the viewer exports spiritual meaning onto something that, from a more secular person’s perspective, could be seen as something else entirely. The aforementioned Ohio woman’s co-workers, for example, didn’t see Jesus. One thinks the “Jesus face” resembles George Washington, while another likened it to Freddy Krueger.

In all cases, however, people saw a face, because, as scientists contend, we humans are programmed to organize patterns into an image, most often a face. The abundance of religion in our various societies, meanwhile, often translates those “faces” into sacred celebrities. And of course Christians aren’t the only devout people who project prophets onto their edibles: Allah has also been seen in fish, bread and animals’ fur.

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