It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything toilet-related here at NeverSmell (you might have noticed by now that I’m not exactly what you would call “genteel”), so I thought I’d start the Monday morning off right by talking not only about the smell of one’s urine, but the smell of one’s urine AFTER eating Asparagus. And I’m ratting out all the family members with this one, so hold on tight…this is going to be a two-flusher!

For someone born without a sense of smell, I do have quite the storehouse of tidbits, facts, and trivia related to smell—I ask a lot of questions and people offer a lot of information. One such piece of information I’ve been carrying for as long as I can remember: Asparagus makes your urine smell funny.

What I did not know until this weekend, however, was that asparagus does not make everyone’s urine smell funny. Now, I believe both my parents, my brother, and his wife have all commented (probably after some Thanksgiving or Christmas meal) about how their urine smells after eating asparagus. So, yes, naturally I assumed this was a universal phenomenon; however, this weekend after making asparagus for my husband and myself I made some comment about how now our urine will smell—my husband was totally confused. After explaining, he said that he probably just never noticed and that this time he would be sure that after the trip to the loo he would report back on the odor. But many hours later (and several trips to the bathroom), Alan said that his urine smelled just as it normally did (and no, I didn’t have him smell mine…though I wish now I did).

I’ve been doing a bit of surfing on the web and have found several articles explaining the phenomenon. And from everything I’ve found, it’s true…not everyone metabolizes asparagus in such a way that results in rank urine. But what really caught my attention, was that not only can some people not produce the stinky urine, but that not everyone can smell the odor. And we’re not talking about your typical anosmic here. We’re talking about people with apparent “normal” senses of smell who cannot smell the particular scent created from eating/excreting asparagus. Willow King, in a rather entertaining article called ASPARAGUS, STINKY PEE, AND SCIENTIFIC CURIOSITY writes:

“A 1980 study examined the possibility that anosmia (the inability to smell the compound) might actually account for those thought previously to be non-excretors. Interestingly, the results showed that, indeed, some people are simply unable to smell the foul odour, no matter how strong it may be (4). Thus was identified a new category of people, the ‘nonperceivers’, with those of us able to smell the stench called ‘perceivers’.”

Interesting, no?

So, here’s what I’m wondering. Does Alan’s urine really smell? or is he one of the “nonperceivers”?

The world may never know (especially if he kills me for posting this).