Hi Jeff,

I take the study to mean that people who drink a lot of sodas, diet or
regular, are at greater risk... The study adjusted internally for
differences in patterns of consumption.

Will, T2

Nor are the drinkers of diet soda. Forty years ago, when diet soda first
came out (I remember the Fresca and Tab - still avialable if you look),
I think around 35 years ago, I don't think that many people drank it. It
was definitely more popular twenty years ago. I remember drinking lots
of Diet Coke in college and grad school. But, I think 30 or 40 years
ago, diet soda tended by drunk by people who were already overweight and
trying to lose weight or those who were weight conscious (and thin) not
trying to gain weight.

Since then, diet sodas have moved more into the mainstream.

Jeff

It was really meant as a joke....

I suppose the assumption was that the kidneys and livers of most human
creatures work relatively the same (which may not be completely
true)... and that asparagus is well known to produce a characteristic
odor of the urine, due to the asparagusic acid
(alpha-aminodimethyl-gamma-butyrothetin) that is naturally found in
asparagus. It is estimated that as many as 40% of the population of
the UK produce odiferous urine after eating asparagus... The French
population also has a significant proportion of people producing the
unique smelling pee, after eating asparagus.

Believe it or not, there have been serious scientific studies touching
upon this curious area of biochemistry and toxicology, as it concerns
pee.

Here is a link to an abstract of an article appearing in the April,
2001, issue of Drug Metabolism and Disposition, produced under the
auspices of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental
Therapeutics.

http://tinyurl.com/25zlow

For those who do not get links very well, here is a relevant re-cap of
a portion of the article, detailing  the history of asparagus and
early documented evidence that the phenomenon of smelly pee was
observed as long ago as the 18th century.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  -

Pointers From History. Whether or not asparagus was known in the
ancient Egyptian world, or earlier, is unclear. Mythological mention
of the vegetable occurs during the perilous walk of Theseus via the
Saronic Gulf wearing his father's sword and sandals to claim the
heirdom of the Athenian throne. At the Isthmus of Corinth he was
accosted by the marauder Sinis but managed to outwit and kill him. He
then discovered the brigand's daughter, Perigune, hiding in a dense
clump of asparagus, vowing never to burn or uproot the plant if it
would only protect her. Alas, to no avail. She bore Theseus a son,
Melanippus, whose descendants, the Ionians inhabiting Caria, protected
the plant by severe laws out of respect for their ancestors. Asparagus
is also mentioned in the writings of such Greek scholars as Antiphon
(480-411 B.C.), Theopompus (380-? B.C.), and Theophrastes (372-287
B.C.), but cultivated asparagus seems to have been unknown, and all of
these may have been referring to a wild plant of another species.

However, the Romans at the time of Cato the Elder (234-149 B.C.) were
well acquainted with asparagus, and detailed instructions for its
cultivation are given in Cato's surviving treatise, On Agriculture (De
Agri Cultura). Other authors, including Dioscorides (ca. 40-90 A.D.)
in his De Materia Medica, Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.) in his epic
Historia Naturalis, and Apicus (De Re Coquinarasometimes credited to
Caelius) and Columella (De Re Rustica), who both lived under the rule
of Tiberius (14-37 A.D.) during the early part of the first century,
also described the plant and its cultivation, and it appears that
their asparagus was the same as we enjoy today.

Even though asparagus was well known in England by the 10th century
A.D. a resurgence in interest occurred throughout Europe during the
1500s. John Gerard(e) (1545-1612), who wrote in 1597, was the first
English author to mention asparagus, deriving the name from the Latin
"asparagi " which he translated to signify "the first sprig or sprout
of every plant, especially when it be tender". Meager, in his English
Gardener, informs us that in his time (1670) the London markets were
well supplied with forced asparagus, and Louis XIV (the Sun King)
(1638-1715) popularized asparagus among the French nation when he
built Versailles. By the late 1600s herbalists and horticulturists had
made asparagus familiar all over Europe (M'Intosh, 1855; Hedrick,
1919).

Despite its long usage over 2000 years, it appears that it wasn't
until the turn of the 18th century that reports linking its ingestion
with the production of odorous urine began to emerge. John Arbuthnot
(1667-1735), a Scottish mathematician and physician to Queen Anne,
noted in a book on foods first published in 1731 that "asparagus...
affects the urine with a foetid smell (especially if cut when they are
white) and therefore have been suspected by some physicians as not
friendly to the kidneys; when they are older, and begin to ramify,
they lose this quality; but then they are not so agreeable"
(Arbuthnot, 1735). Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), in the first edition of
his Dictionary of the English Language (1755), quotes Arbuthnot's
passage, although Charles Knight (1791-1873) in his English
Cyclopaedia (1859) does not mention the odiferous property; perhaps it
was not yet common (Johnson, 1755; Knight, 1859). However, by 1866,
Pierre Larousse in the Grand Dictionnaire Universel assures us that
"tout le monde connaît l'odeur fétide qu'elle communique à l'urine"
(Larousse, 1866).

It is coincidental that the odor-producing phenomenon was not observed
until the use of sulfur, sulfate, and organic sulfur materials as
fertilizers to improve asparagus flavor had become prevalent from the
late 17th century onwards. It is probable, therefore, that the urine
odor was associated with a sulfur-containing component of asparagus.
During this century it has been conclusively demonstrated that onions
and garlic grown in the presence of low levels of sulfur have a very
weak flavor and lose lachrymatory properties; increased flavor
strength, typical of the Alliums, is associated with higher levels of
sulfur compounds, mainly sulfate, within the soil (Platenius, 1941;
Kumar and Sahay, 1954; Freeman and Mossadeghi, 1970, 1971).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And thus, my remark that "asparagus makes your pee smell funny"  ;-)

Will, T2

Yes, Ted, I would agree.... and that seems to be one of the
conclusions of that study in England that I cited. What strikes me as
odd is that apparently  no one noticed the phenomenon until the 18th
Century.... Of course, that could have  been due to emerging
techniques of fertilization, and agriculture.

Will, T2