Why you should turn your poop blue
A new trend has taken over social media, and this time it involves “blue poop”.
But, this viral trend might actually be beneficial.
The Blue Poop challenge involves eating food made with blue food colouring - usually two muffins - for breakfast to turn your poop blue.
Why, you might ask? Because the viral challenge, started by nutrition research company ZOE, wants you to find out the state of your gut health by tracking how long it takes for food to travel through.
“Poop is like a message from your gut, and it has a lot to say,” gut health nutritionist Amanda Sauceda, RDN, said in a video about the challenge.
How does it work?
You can bake the muffins using a blue muffin recipe on ZOE’s website, and you should eat two for breakfast and record the time.
When you see the blue or green-tinted poop, write down the time again so that you can find out just how healthy your gut is via the ZOE website.
The recipe can also be altered to be gluten-free, but the company advises to use enough blue dye for the test to work.
Why blue poop?
Dr Sarah Berry, leader of nutrition sciences at King’s College London, worked with ZOE to publish a study asking participants to eat specially-tinted muffins to measure their transit time.
“There are several scientific ways of measuring gut transit time, such as swallowing a special capsule or small wireless device,” Dr Berry said in a statement.
“But these methods are complicated and invasive and can’t easily be done at home. Our data shows that transit time, tracked with blue dye, is an indicator of gut health, and is better than other non-invasive methods.”
My blue muffins for the #bluepoopchallenge pic.twitter.com/PA1zvK3U4c
— Livia Văduva (@shamrockraver) May 18, 2021
Scientists found that transit time - the amount of time it takes for food to move through your gut - varied from under 12 hours to several days, with an average of around 29 hours.
According to ZOE, the tests showed that shorter transit times were generally linked with better health, having less abdominal fat, and healthier responses to food.
Gut transit time is affected by diet, lifestyle, hydration, and the gut microbiome - the trillions of bugs living in the gut.
Those who took more time to poop had more microbes that fed on protein and fewer fibre-loving bugs that produce short-chain fatty acids, helpful molecules that are linked to better gut health.
“Interestingly, we also found that people with longer transit times were more likely to have a greater diversity of microbes in their gut, which is often associated with better gut health. This suggests that more microbiome diversity may not always be a sign of better health for people who don’t poop very often,” it said in a statement.
“People with the very fastest transit times, suggesting they had diarrhoea, tended to have a less healthy gut microbiome,” the statement continued.
Professor Tim Spector, epidemiologist at King’s College London and scientific founder of ZOE, said: “The Blue Poop Challenge is a simple way to find out what is going on in your gut. All you need are a couple of blue muffins and a spirit of curiosity to take that first step,”
Image credit: ZOE / Instagram