Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DblnjWjs6wq/

Researchers from Duke University and the University of North Carolina now report a wastewater technique that detects DNA fragments from the foods we’ve eaten. The concept is similar to the wastewater surveillance that became an important tool for tracking COVID-19.

In North Carolina wastewater representing some 2.1 million people, the technique identified hundreds of foods, including fruits, vegetables, meats, grains, herbs, and spices.

This is a new day for nutrition research. Traditional diet surveys are expensive, slow, and depend on people accurately remembering what they ate. Wastewater surveillance can collect information anonymously from entire communities—and it costs less than one cent per person.

Scientists can watch community diets change after new nutrition policies, economic disruptions, or changes in food-assistance programs.

But this technology doesn’t reveal what an individual person ate. It measures dietary patterns across populations, and additional work is needed to improve accuracy, determine which foods can be reliably detected, and address privacy and ethical concerns.

The bottom line: tomorrow’s nutrition research may begin not with a questionnaire—but with what’s flowing beneath our streets.

References on my website.

#Nutrition #PublicHealth #Wastewater #FoodScience #MedicalResearch