North Carolina researchers are turning an unlikely source into a new kind of nutrition report card: the state’s sewer system. By studying food DNA flushed down drains, scientists say they may be able to track broad community eating patterns faster and more objectively than traditional surveys.
The next step is getting much more local. Researchers are piloting neighborhood-level sampling in Durham by collecting wastewater directly from manholes, according to Axios, after an earlier analysis examined sewage from communities representing more than 2 million North Carolinians, with much of the sampling concentrated in the Triangle and Charlotte.
How FoodSeq-FLOW Reads A Community’s Diet
The peer-reviewed study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used a genomic platform called FoodSeq-FLOW to identify fragments of plant and animal DNA in wastewater. The researchers analyzed 183 samples from 21 treatment plants serving roughly 2.1 million people and detected 184 plant food taxa and 116 animal food taxa at a cost of less than a penny per person, according to the study’s abstract on PubMed.
The method looks for genetic material associated with food rather than asking residents to remember every meal they ate. A report from Duke University School of Medicine says the wastewater results closely matched dietary information from stool samples collected in Durham, while the researchers stress that the system is intended to measure community patterns, not identify individual people.
What North Carolina’s Wastewater Revealed
The study found that food signatures varied with geography, income, education and the size of foreign-born populations. Beer-related ingredients were associated with greater discretionary income, while tropical fruits and pulses appeared more often in places with larger immigrant communities, according to the findings summarized by the study authors…