5 Minute Urine Test can Reveal if You Have a Healthy Diet

By Ana Verayo, | January 17, 2017

A new urine test can determine what you ate in the last 24 hours.

A new urine test can determine what you ate in the last 24 hours.

Scientists from the UK have developed a five-minute urine test that can reveal how healthy your diet is. This urine test uses biological markers created when food breaks down. It can provide data on how much fat, sugar, fiber, and protein someone has consumed in the last 24 hours.

This test was developed by researchers from the Imperial College London to keep dieters on track with their food consumption and for doctors to obtain a more accurate idea of their patient's diet.

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In most cases, people often do not provide an accurate report of what they have eaten. Research suggests that 60 percent of people cannot provide a definite answer of what they have eaten in a day.

Apart from this, people also hide facts about eating junk food or unhealthy food and report more fruit and veggie consumption especially those who are overweight or obese.

This new study provides a detailed breakdown of food consumption to reveal how diet affects overall health.

 According to the lead author of the study, Gary Frost of the Department of Medicine at Imperial, it is a major flaw in nutrition and diet studies that we do not have a true measure of what people eat.

Current records rely on daily logs of people's diets. However, studies suggest that around 60 percent people misreport what they eat. This test could now become the first independent indicator about the quality of a person's diet.

During experiments, the urine test was administered to 19 volunteers with four different diets from very healthy to very unhealthy in a span of 72 hours. Researchers obtained urine samples and tested for compounds known as metabolites which are produced when food is broken down inside the body such as red meat, chicken, fish, vegetables.

Using this data, researchers were able to develop a urine metabolite profile that was used the basis of a healthy and balanced diet with the right amount of fruit and vegetables. 

"The test cannot determine yet if you had 15 chips and two sausages yesterday but we are on our way," co-author of the study, Isabel Garcia-Perez from Imperial, said.

This new study was published in the journal Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology.

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