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Apparently pink urine after eating beets is a well known and published
fact in medical literature. It even has a name; it is called beturia.
According to one person who wrote, "it is known to happen in people with
celiac disease, people who are iron deficient and also in others."

One other person said they saw the urine color diminish after going GF
3 people said they hadn't seen the the urine color diminish after going
GF, thus they did not think you can use it as a marker of intestinal
permeability.

This is from another poster: "I did not think of it at the time but
years ago before I was on a GF diet I ate about a half pound of red
Jelly Bellies in a short time.  My urine was red and when my nose ran it
was pink. "

The following is from the delphi forum"
It means nothing at all, as far as scientists know. Half the human
population produce red urine after eating beets, half don't. More or
less the same proportion holds true for peculiar-smelling urine after
eating asparagus.

Here is the abstract of a good article on the subject written by a
British researcher:

Anecdotal observations scattered throughout the literature have often
provided clues to underlying variations in humans' ability to handle
dietary chemicals. Beetroot, the red root of the garden beet used
extensively as a food source, is known to produce red urine in some
people following its ingestion, whereas others appear to be able to eat
the vegetable with impunity. Asparagus, a vegetable whose young shoots
have been eaten as a delicacy since the times of the Roman Empire, has
been associated with the production of a malodorous urine smelling like
rotten cabbage. Those who produce this odor assume that everyone does,
and those who do not produce it have no idea of its potential olfactory
consequences. These two examples, where the population appears divided
in its ability to process food products or more precisely the chemicals
contained within them, are reviewed in detail in this article.

And here is the link for the complete text

http://dmd.aspetjournals.org/cgi/content/full/29/4/539

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One of the interesting things I got out of this article was that acidity
of the stomach that changes the color of the beets and thus changes the
color of the urine. I know that GF diets change the amount of stomach
acid for some people. I think it would be interesting for someone to do
a study to learn if and when beturia changes for someone on a GF diet.
But, there are so many more important things to learn about this GF diet
that it will probably be 20 years before such a mundane subject should
be studied.

Deborah in Oklahoma

* Visit the Celiac Web Page at www.enabling.org/ia/celiac/index.html *