Urine Test Checks on Health Through Diet

A urine test that measures biological markers created by the breakdown of foods such as red meat, chicken, fish and fruit and vegetables, has been developed by researchers from Imperial College London, Aberystwyth University and Newcastle University. The five-minute test also gives an indication of how much fat, sugar, fibre and protein are in a person’s diet. Professor Gary Frost, senior author of the study from the Department of Medicine at Imperial said: “A major weakness in all nutrition and diet studies is that we have no true measure of what people eat. We rely solely on people keeping logs of their daily diets - but studies suggest around 60% of people misreport what they eat to some extent. This test could be the first independent indicator of the quality of a person's diet - and what they are really eating.”

Professor John Draper from the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences at Aberystwyth University and co-author on this study is working on developing the test for use in the home. "The future challenge is to apply the technology developed in this laboratory study in a community setting and objectively monitor diet in the home. The teams in Aberystwyth and Newcastle have been doing just this and the results are looking very promising."

Professor John Mathers, co-author from the Human Nutrition Research Centre at Newcastle University, said: "For the first time, this research offers an objective way of assessing the overall healthiness of people's diets without all the hassles, biases and errors of recording what they've eaten."

With the work at an early stage, objectives are to develop the test to monitor diet based on a single urine sample as well as increase the sensitivity levels; the team are hoping that the test will be available to the public within the next two years.