( #Asparagus, #Pee )
Dave Chappelle as R. Kelly | Credit: Comedy Central
One of the great mysteries of the human condition is the odd smell of your urine when you eat Asparagus. Even odder is that for some people it doesn’t happen OR they can’t smell it.
Click here to see a clip of Austin Powers demonstrating….
The good people at io9 posted an article explaining that metabolites in the vegetable are not processed in the body and are passed via urine. The presence of the metabolites in the urine result in the odd odor.
The interesting thing is that some people either don’t produce the metabolites or can’t smell them:
“… the recognition of the asparagus odor in urine is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon; some people produce an asparagus odor that is easy to detect, and the presumption is that some people produce more odorant. However, because the odor-causing molecules have not been unequivocally identified,[…] it is not possible to measure its concentration in urine; it is reasonable to assume that odorant production varies from individual to individual, and people with urine that does not have a detectable odor may produce it, albeit at a low concentration.”
Yet another thing to think about when you are peeing…Drip, Drip, Drip.
