Teen detectives, round two

Artisanal food that ain’t

By Culinate staff

January 11, 2010

On Facebook recently, Gourmet’s former Web editor, Christy Harrison, noted the latest round of teen food detecting: fancy food that isn't. Here’s the list:

Two high-school students armed with DNA barcoding tech uncovered quite a few food shenanigans in New York City markets. Examples include expensive “sheep’s milk cheese” made from cow milk, “venison” dog treats made from beef, and “sturgeon caviar” that was actually Mississippi paddlefish.

The students, from the same school that did a similar science stunt last year on sushi, worked with scientists to match up DNA sequences in the tested foodstuffs. Not all foods, however, were identifiable:

Only canned foods were processed at such high temperatures as to break DNA strands and make them often unidentifiable.