White storks in Europe are trading their traditional diet for the culinary delights of the local landfill, and it's not exactly a health plan straight out of a wellness magazine. Researchers have found that these once-endangered birds are packing on the pounds from feasting on human trash, raising concerns about hidden long-term health effects.

The landfills offer a smorgasbord of meat scraps, insects, and rodents, saving the storks energy they'd otherwise spend hunting in fields. But this convenience comes with a side of plastics, wires, glass, and heavy metals. Anustup Bandyopadhyay, a PhD student at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, noted that while global waste is creating new feeding opportunities, the consequences for storks are still up for debate.

Studying storks in Poland, where landfill dining has become popular over the past decade, researchers found that landfill-fed storks sport greater body mass and higher energy stores. "They can spend less time foraging and potentially channel that time and energy into other activities such as breeding," Bandyopadhyay said. But the early findings, presented at the Society for Experimental Biology conference, also revealed DNA damage in chicks as young as a week old.

The junk food diet may also be altering migration patterns. In the Iberian peninsula, white storks have gone from being migratory to partially migratory or even sedentary, thanks in part to landfill subsidies. Prof Aldina Franco, an ecologist at the University of East Anglia, described landfill food as "junk food" for birds - highly energetic but poor quality and rotting.

Franco pointed out the nuance: while some storks may die from contaminants, the majority benefit from the extra food. But with EU policies reducing open landfill access, the storks' reliance on trash could become a problem. "Will the stork populations decline if we completely prevent them from accessing our organic waste?" Franco asked. "I think that's a risk and it needs to be thought through."