Measuring dietary intake through urine? I can’t imagine it. Clients providing their urine in a jar to show what they’ve eaten. According to new British research, it might be the future.
Insight into Diet through Urine
The researchers have developed a test that can determine what a person has eaten based on their urine. In just five minutes, the test could show what type of meat you’ve consumed, whether you’ve eaten enough vegetables and fruits, and translate it into (macro)nutrients: how much protein, carbohydrates, fats, and fibers.
The researchers view their work as the first steps in a new method that should make it easier to see how well people adhere to their diet, for example.
Measuring Nutritional Intake
In our Fitsociety app, we have included thousands of products with their nutritional values. Furthermore, we have put a lot of thought into how to make it as easy as possible for you as a customer to input what you have eaten and how that translates into daily nutritional values.
Not without reason, we have paid a lot of attention to this. The British researchers point out that when people have to report what they have eaten themselves, this goes wrong in 33-80% of cases [2,3]. People tend to overstate the amount of healthy food consumed while often not reporting enough of unhealthy food [4,5,6]. Also, the amount of calories is often underestimated [2]. This is also a reason why mentioning an average intake per person in practice turns out to be so difficult (and why I did not find this a convenient fact to work with in the earlier article today about Fajah).
The researchers point out that this erroneous data has so far led to many different results in studies on nutritional intake. It’s not difficult to imagine how advising someone becomes more difficult if you have incorrect data. You calculate a calorie requirement, and the client indicates they’re following it. Then it turns out the client is still gaining weight, and as a coach, you don’t understand what’s going wrong. Is your advice wrong or is your data wrong?
You might have less doubt about the latter if it’s objectively determined based on urine.
Research
The researchers divided 19 volunteers into groups receiving four different diets for three days each. The diets ranged from “very healthy” to “very unhealthy” (according to the definitions of the World Health Organization’s nutrition guidelines). They stayed in a London research building where urine was collected three times a day. Then the researchers measured hundreds of metabolites, breakdown products of digested food. In some cases, these metabolites indicate the type of food consumed (red/white meat, fruit, vegetables). In other cases, they indicate which nutrients have been consumed (protein, fats, sugars, fibers). In some cases, they measured metabolites that can precisely indicate the type of food (e.g., citrus).
They tested their work by then referring to the data from an earlier study. For that previous study, 291 Britons and Danes had recorded their diet and provided urine samples. The British researchers were able to accurately measure the food intake of these 291 individuals based on their urine using their method.
Measuring Nutritional Intake in Practice
The researchers state that they need to further develop to obtain even more detailed data from urine. Also, the technology should be implemented at a local level with measurements that can be conducted at home.
Now we just have to wait for the first client to come in with a jar of urine.
References
- Isabel Garcia-Perez, Joram M Posma, Rachel Gibson, Edward S Chambers, Tue H Hansen, Henrik Vestergaard, Torben Hansen, Manfred Beckmann, Oluf Pedersen, Paul Elliott, Jeremiah Stamler, Jeremy K Nicholson, John Draper, John C Mathers, Elaine Holmes, Gary Frost. Objective assessment of dietary patterns by use of metabolic phenotyping: a randomised, controlled, crossover trial. The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, 2017; DOI: 10.1016/S2213-8587(16)30419-3
- Rennie, KL, Coward, A, and Jebb, SA. Estimating under-reporting of energy intake in dietary surveys using an individualised method. Br J Nutr. 2007; 97: 1169–1176
- Poslusna, K, Ruprich, J, de Vries, JH, Jakubikova, M, and van’t Veer, P. Misreporting of energy and micronutrient intake estimated by food records and 24 hour recalls, control and adjustment methods in practice. Br J Nutr. 2009; 101: S73–S85
- Lafay, L, Mennen, L, Basdevant, A et al. Does energy intake underreporting involve all kinds of food or only specific food items? Results from the Fleurbaix Laventie Ville Santé (FLVS) study. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2000; 24: 1500–1506
- Rosell, MS, Hellenius, ML, de Faire, UH, and Johansson, GK. Associations between diet and the metabolic syndrome vary with the validity of dietary intake data. Am J Clin Nutr. 2003; 78: 84–90
- Dhurandhar, NV, Schoeller, D, Brown, AW et al. Energy balance measurement: when something is not better than nothing. Int J Obes (Lond). 2015; 39: 1109–1113
