(NYT) – During the Covid-19 pandemic, wastewater testing became a virus warning system. Now, scientists are using the approach to understand how communities eat.

Using wastewater in North Carolina, researchers searched for traces of food DNA that had survived digestion. For less than a penny a person, they identified hundreds of foods that had been consumed — like chocolate, lettuce, turkey, blueberries, black pepper — and could even infer the socioeconomic profile of a community. (Read More)