The DNA of Dinner
Could diners of the future be able to send food back because it has the wrong DNA?
CNN reports on how two New York teenagers, Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, collected food samples from a selection of sushi restaurants and grocery stores. They then sent these off to be analysed. The DNA sequences were mapped out, producing a “DNA barcode” that was then matched against a library of known species.
The results weren’t encouraging. A quarter of the samples tested weren’t what they claimed to be with cheaper fish being substituted instead. This substitution wasn’t necessarily the fault of the restaurant or shop, it could have happened anywhere in the chain from sea to plate.
Mark Stoeckle, father of one of the girls, described their experiment as being “like CSI for fish”.
Today such samples must be sent off to the lab for DNA analysis and matching. However with improvements in technology I can imagine simple sequencing equipment one day becoming portable.
Maybe in the future we’ll all be able to buy a personal DNA testing kit with a built-in library of common patterns. That way we’ll be able to find out what’s really in our meat pie or burger.
Then again, maybe we’re happier not knowing.
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