Important nutritional research is being piloted through North Carolina's sewers
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During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, North Carolina public officials plumbed the sewers looking for signs of the virus' prevalence was in the state.
- Now, that same infrastructure is being tested as a way to track the diets of entire cities and neighborhoods.
Why it matters: The tracking method — which captures food DNA left behind in sewage — could become an important tool for studying the nutritional health of a community or determine food access disparities by neighborhoods.
Driving the news: In a new study published by several Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill researchers, wastewater samples for more than 2 million people in North Carolina — mainly in the Triangle and Charlotte — were examined.
Zoom in: The findings were precise enough that they tracked the eating habits of different communities, tracing their economic, health and cultural differences in a way that could inform nutritional policy, said Lawrence David, a Duke researcher who authored the study.
- For example, cities with larger South Asian populations consumed more mangos than others. North Carolina food staples were found to be a negative predictor for per capita income, while beer ingredients and kratom were strong wealth indicators.
- Another finding: inland communities ate more nationally distributed fish (like salmon) and coastal and rural communities ate more local and freshwater fish.
What they're saying: "There's so much policy that comes out around food, and we have a lot of debate about what would be good for people," David told Axios.
- "But when you think about it," he added, "there actually aren't a lot of ways to get data" on the real-time impact of policies at the federal, state or local level.
- The system could potentially examine the results of changes to SNAP benefits, school lunch programs and economic downturns more accurately than surveys.
Yes, but: The method does have limitations that researchers hope to overcoming, including the degradation of samples by factors such as temperature or the confounding influence of industrial or agricultural wastewater.
- The research also excludes communities that use septic tanks.
What's next: David said researchers hope to continue to expand wastewater tracking to other communities in the U.S.
- They're also using Durham as a pilot for examining diets at the neighborhood level, a process that requires taking samples directly from manholes rather than at wastewater processing facility.
- David said they're avoiding sampling populations smaller than 500 people for privacy reasons.
- They are also working with community leaders to see how the data can be used to advocate for more food resources.