vlog

Skip to content
NOWCAST vlog News
Watch on Demand
Advertisement

Your urine can reveal everything about what you eat, doctors say

Doctors hope to one day use that data to help high-risk patients

Advertisement
Your urine can reveal everything about what you eat, doctors say

Doctors hope to one day use that data to help high-risk patients

Doctors know exactly what you're eating from your urine, according to a nine-month, UK-based study conducted by 16 medical experts. They hope someday that data will help nutritionists and physicians monitor food consumption patterns in high-risk individuals attempting to lose weight or recovering from heart attacks. "For the first time, this research offers an objective way of assessing the overall healthiness of people's diets without all the hassles, biases and errors of recording what they've eaten," Professor John Mathers, study co-author from the Human Nutrition Research Centre at Newcastle University said Friday. The experiment took place from August 2013 to May 2014. Researchers placed 19 test subjects on four randomized diets and then collected their urine. Impressively, experts were able to differentiate between each subject's meal plan based on his/her collected waste. Biological markers indicated evidence of different foods - fats, carbohydrates, meats, fruits, vegetables and more. "Significant stepwise differences in metabolite concentrations were seen between diets with the lowest and highest metabolic risks," the study concluded. Why are the trial's results so important? Because people are really, really bad at keeping honest records of what they're putting into their bodies. "A major weakness in all nutrition and diet studies is that we have no true measure of what people eat," co-author Gary Frost, professor from the Department of Medicine, said. "We rely solely on people keeping logs of their daily diets - but studies suggest around 60 percent of people misreport what they eat to some extent." Follow @theabigailelise on Twitter.

Doctors know exactly what you're eating from your urine, according to a nine-month, UK-based study conducted by . They hope someday that data will help nutritionists and physicians monitor food consumption patterns in high-risk individuals attempting to lose weight or recovering from heart attacks.

"For the first time, this research offers an objective way of assessing the overall healthiness of people's diets without all the hassles, biases and errors of recording what they've eaten," Professor John Mathers, study co-author from the Human Nutrition Research Centre at Newcastle University

Advertisement

Related Content

The experiment took place from August 2013 to May 2014. Researchers placed 19 test subjects on four randomized diets and then collected their urine. Impressively, experts were able to differentiate between each subject's meal plan based on his/her collected waste. Biological markers indicated evidence of different foods - fats, carbohydrates, meats, fruits, vegetables and more.

"Significant stepwise differences in metabolite concentrations were seen between diets with the lowest and highest metabolic risks," the study concluded.

Why are the trial's results so important? Because people are really, really bad at keeping honest records of what they're putting into their bodies.

"A major weakness in all nutrition and diet studies is that we have no true measure of what people eat," co-author Gary Frost, professor from the Department of Medicine, said. "We rely solely on people keeping logs of their daily diets - but studies suggest around 60 percent of people misreport what they eat to some extent."