By Anupum Pant
A few Stems of Asparagus eaten, shall give our Urine a disagreeable Odour – Benjamin Franklin
Asparagus transforms my chamber-pot into a flask of perfume. – Marcel Proust
It’s a long known fact that your pee smells bad when you eat an asparagus. However not many must have realized this had they not known that this actually happens. That is because, after a lot of rigorous study it has been found that only about 22% of the world’s population can smell asparagus in the pee.
At first it was a debated fact that its either that not everyone’s body produces this bad smell in their pee because of the difference in the way their body digests asparagus. Later someone thought that maybe most people do produce this smell but only a few have the ability to smell it. The second hypothesis turned out to be true.
Most people actually digest asparagus in a way that it produces bad smelling urine. But only about 22% of the people have the ability to detect the smell.