Skip to main content

Rapid urine test tells the truth about your diet, even if you don’t

With various health tests already requiring a sample of it, we’ve long known that urine isn’t always something that should be simply flushed down the toilet.

The usefulness of one of our body’s waste products has just been highlighted by an international team of researchers that’s created a fast urine test capable of measuring the quality of a person’s diet.

Researchers at Imperial College London collaborated with colleagues at Northwestern University, University of Illinois, and Murdoch University in Australia to examine the levels of 46 so-called “metabolites” — widely seen as an objective indicator of diet quality — in the urine of 1,848 people in the U.S., and how they link with a person’s diet, according to an Imperial report.

Different metabolites are produced by the body according to the type of food and drink being digested. For example, certain metabolites will be produced by alcohol consumption, while red meat will produce different ones.

The test can provide detailed information about an individual’s diet, making it useful for a range of health specialists, including doctors and nutritionists. With diet a key factor when it comes to health and disease, a health specialist will be keen to learn about a patient’s diet. But accurate information can be hard to come by as the process relies on an individual’s ability to accurately recall details of their food intake — while some people may simply be reluctant to reveal their penchant for sticky donuts and the like.

But the new urine test doesn’t lie. In other words, the five-minute test can help to quickly provide reliable data on the composition and quality of a person’s diet, and also whether it’s the right kind of diet for their biological make-up.

Further research by Imperial, this time carried out in collaboration with Newcastle University and Aberystwyth University in the U.K., and Murdoch University, showed that the test can also create a person’s unique urine “fingerprint,” which isn’t as messy as it sounds.

The “fingerprint” can be used to calculate an individual’s Dietary Metabotype Score, or DMS, that could prove useful for health specialists working with patients to create a new diet, something the researchers call “precision nutrition.”

The results of the research were published this week by Nature Food. Additional work is now being carried out to see how a person’s DMS score may link to their risk of certain potentially life-threatening health conditions.

Editors' Recommendations

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Is your Amazon Echo, Alexa, or Ring down today? You aren’t alone
Amazon Echo Show 15 hanging vertically on the wall.

If you've tried to use your Alexa or Ring device this morning only to receive no response, don't worry -- it's not just you. Amazon Web Services, the cloud-computing backbone of Amazon.com and large portions of the internet, is experiencing outages this morning that are affecting thousands of users.

But it's not just Amazon-powered smart devices. There are thousands of outage reports for Disney+, as well as games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, League of Legends, and others. You might notice that your Alexa smart assistant doesn't respond, or just says she doesn't know what went wrong. Even using your Alexa app to activate smart devices might not work.

Read more
Don’t let your cable company sell you a TV
X Class Xfinity TV

In a matter of weeks, Comcast is going to try to sell you a TV. I can understand if you might be tempted by the idea of no longer needing a cable box to get cable TV. But, I implore you: Don’t do it.

One exception: If you love your cable box -- and I mean if you really enjoy your cable box and its remote control and can’t imagine how you could ever watch TV without them -- then maybe go ahead and buy one of the TVs they’ll be hawking.

Read more
Animal Crossing won’t take away your DLC items if you ditch Switch Online
Key art for Animal Crossing Happy Home Paradise.

Nintendo has clarified some details about the upcoming Animal Crossing: New Horizons -- Happy Home Paradise DLC and how it interacts with Nintendo Online memberships. In a statement sent to Digital Trends, Nintendo of America confirms that players will be able to keep items they earned through the DLC, even if they cancel their Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership. However, they will not be able to play the DLC once they unsubscribe from the service.

According to Nintendo, players will need an active Expansion Pack membership to play the DLC. The archipelago will become inactive if players unsubscribe and do not own a copy of the DLC. Nintendo confirms that save data will still remain stored on the console. So if a player unsubscribes, they will not lose their save data and will be able to resume where they left off if they buy the DLC or resubscribe.

Read more