Why do asparagus make urine smell funny

Has your urine color changed from its normal hue? Find out what causes bright-yellow urine, from dietary changes to underlying conditions. Vegetables are a very important food group on a low-carb diet. Here are 21 healthy and delicious vegetables that are low in carbs. The link between asparagus and breast cancer is still being studied, but current research suggests that eating asparagus will not increase your risk….

Getting your meals delivered can save major time on meal prep. Numerous foods are marketed as healthy but contain hidden ingredients. Here are 14 "health foods" that aren't as nutritious as you thought. Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Asparagusic acid General effects on urine odor Varying effects Bottom line You may have noticed that after eating asparagus, your pee has a somewhat unpleasant scent.

Share on Pinterest. How does it affect urine smell? The bottom line. Read this next. Can You Eat Raw Asparagus? Duane Mellor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Have you eaten asparagus and noticed that it can alter how your urine smells? Why do certain foods change our urine and does it make a difference to our health? Observations of how what we eat can affect our pee can be traced back through history, from the ancient Greeks including Antiphon and Theophrastes to an early edition of the medical journal The Lancet in This happened to coincide with the British agrarian revolution when fertilisers containing sulphur were first used on crops, although there is no real evidence to say if this effect is causal.

There have been different theories put forward over the years explaining why only some people notice a smell in their urine after eating asparagus. It was first thought that some people broke down the vegetable in a way that released a smelly chemical in the urine. This led to a theory that the characteristic was carried by a dominant gene that only needed to be inherited from one parent.

This suggested that any asparagus compound responsible for the smell could pass through the placenta and be converted to the smelly compound by the foetus that inherited the gene from their father.

The problem with the idea of a genetic ability to produce smelly urine is that there is not just one compound that always appears in urine after eating asparagus. The main culprit is aspargusic acid, which is found exclusively in asparagus. When asparagus is digested, asparagusic acid gets broken down into sulfur containing byproducts. Sulfur, in general, is not very pleasant to smell, notes Dr. When you pee, the sulfur byproducts evaporate almost immediately, causing you to smell that unpleasant scent.

Other foods and drinks have been known to cause smelly urine. For example, some people report that drinking too much coffee causes their urine to smell like coffee. Brussels sprouts, onions and garlic have also been linked to odd smelling pee in some people. Asparagus pee usually shows up between 15 and 30 minutes after eating the vegetable and can last for several hours.

One study found that the smell could last for up to 14 hours!