Asparagus Syndrome

[steepholm]

I dreamed last night that a relative of mine was taken forcibly to hospital on account of his strange-smelling urine. I was running after the doctor, shouting "You don't understand! It's just that we ate asparagus for supper!"

The doctor turned and in my dream he looked at me with a dreadful blankness. And it came into my mind that he didn't know about the asparagus-and-urine thing.

My dream arose from eating it myself last night, of course, and also reading the asparagus Wiki page a few months ago, where I learned that the ability to detect the change in odour was not universal. Apparently it's a genetic thing, limited to about 22% of the population.

Which leads me, naturally, to ask:

[Poll #1830587]

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Going by the people who've answered this poll, which admittedly might be biassed towards those who can tell (few people like to advertise their own deficits, however trivial) most people can tell the difference, but not all, by any means.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

We seem to be conflating two variables: whether one can smell the difference, and whose urine it is. The number of people, even spouses, willing to sniff each others' urine to test these separately must be too small to form a meaningful data sample.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Good point. Luckily, research has been done on this matter! The Wiki page is a little vague, but the consensus appears to be that all asparagus eaters, or almost all, produce the distinctive smell, but that a proportion is unable to detect the fact.