Have you ever really looked at your own poop? There’s a lot you can learn if you give it a shot.
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Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed
When my poop is bright red, the culprit is usually beets I ate a day or two before. As beets have become a larger part of my diet, the number of seconds I stare at bright red poop while thinking I'm about to die have steadily decreased. But recently, faced with another clean white bowl of shocking red poop, I ran through everything I'd eaten in the past week and came up beet-free. Panic naturally followed.
The longer I spent googling poop colors, the more intrigued I got. What about other colors besides red? What about texture, or size, or smell? Could I hack my own poop? Eventually I called up Dr. Anish Sheth, gastroenterologist at the Princeton Medical Group and co-author of What's Your Poo Telling You? (Chronicle Books, 2007), to find out more.
COLORS
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Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed
BROWN
Poop isn't brown because all the gloriously colored foods you've eaten have mixed together to create a single shade; it's brown because of bile. Bile is a liquid, produced by our livers and stored in our gallbladders, that mostly serves to break down fats and remove them from digested foods so that our small intestines can snag the fats and process them. "Bile is green," says Sheth, "but as it goes through the GI [gastrointestinal] tract it's actually metabolized by bacteria in the small intestine." That interaction of bile with the intestine's bacteria also results in a byproduct we don't need, called stercobilin, which is disposed of with the poop. And stercobilin, surprise surprise, is brown.
Ultimately, if your poop is brown, you know that all kinds of gross mushy guts are working properly — your liver, intestine, gallbladder, everything has worked together to come up with that lovely brown color.
CHALKY GRAY OR WHITE
Poop that comes out kind of chalky gray or white-colored is a classic sign that something has gone wrong way back in your system. Pale poop could mean you have a gallstone that's blocking the gallbladder from injecting its bile, but it could also be caused by pancreatic cancer. Pale poop: very bad.
YELLOW
Similarly, beware of notably gross yellow poops. You'll know that something's wrong here; they'll smell terrible, for one thing, and feel greasy and disgusting. They're the result of fat finding its way into your poop — remember, your bile was supposed to take care of fat. The problem could be a parasite like giardia, it could be a result of taking an over-the-counter weight loss drug like Alli, it could be evidence of celiac disease. Who knows? See a doctor.
BLACK
Black poop is also very bad. It's called melena, and it means you've got something bleeding in your upper gastrointestinal tract. "This could be caused by something like an ulcer in the stomach," says Sheth. "The blood is red in the stomach, but by the time it goes down through the system, it gets digested and turns thick and tarry and black."
GREEN
Green poop can be caused by totally innocuous things, which we'll get to later. But it can also be caused by what's called "rapid transit," meaning the bile doesn't spend enough time (it usually needs a few hours) in the intestine, getting broken down and churning out brown stercobilin. Green poop caused by rapid transit is usually pretty loose or straight-up diarrhea, and can be the result of some kind of intestinal bug.
RED
Red poops can be bad, sometimes; blood in the lower gastrointestinal tract that hasn't had time to turn black could turn your poops red. That's bad! But red poops are easily caused by dyes, so don't panic. Speaking of dyes...
How to hack your poo if you actually want it to turn other colors:
After my recent panic in the bathroom, Google helped me come up with the answer: the fancy purple carrots I'd eaten the day before.
See, your digestive tract doesn't bother removing certain kinds of dyes, both natural and artificial, from foods. They're of no particular use or harm, so the body just lets them ride all the way from your mouth to your butt. "Fruits and vegetables that have certain natural colors, that color will be transmitted to your stool and will change the way things look," says Sheth. He specifically named beets (red), blueberries (bluish), and carrots (orange) as common color bandits.
TURN IT RED!
Artificial dyes like Red #40 can have the same effect. A landmark study in 1972, which was, swear to god, subtitled "The Franken Berry Stool," discovered that the red dye in then-new Franken Berry cereal, when consumed in enough quantity, would turn poop red. Red #40 is the most commonly used red food dye in the U.S., though it's been banned in lots of other countries and is on its way to being banned in others. You can find it in Kool-Aid, red candy (Starburst, Jolly Ranchers, cinnamon-flavored gum), cereal like Froot Loops and Trix, Jell-O, Doritos, strawberry ice cream... pretty much everything that's red and comes in a package has Red #40 in it. Want to color your poop red? Drink a bunch of cherry Kool-Aid.
TURN IT GREEN!
Let's go back to our old friend, the green poop. Green poop can show up if you eat an excess of chlorophyll, found especially in dark leafy greens like kale and spinach. The body doesn't break down the colors in chlorophyll, so they head right out the butt. You can achieve this same effect by taking chlorophyll supplements, if you don't want to eat your greens. But, the primary reason leafy greens turn your poop green is because of their high insoluble fiber content. If you want a truly hacked green poop, you're better off going artificial — something with Green #3 dye.
Green #3 isn't as common as Red #40, but you can still find it in canned vegetables and green desserts like popsicles. It's probably worth noting that Green #3 is banned outright in the European Union and has been found to cause tumors. We do not recommend eating enough popsicles to turn your poop lime green, but it will, if you do.
Here's something weird: You can also turn your poop bright green by eating foods with Blue #1, an artificial dye (also, again, banned by several countries for possible deleterious health effects) found commonly in blue- and purple-colored foods. Anything grape- or blue-raspberry-flavored could have Blue #1 in it, and many informal tests have indicated that, instead of turning your poop blue, Blue #1 will turn your poop bright green. That's a fun game! Drink tons of grape Gatorade or eat blue raspberry slushies and watch your poop turn, against all odds, green.
TURN IT ORANGE!
It's also easy, and healthier, to go for orange poops. Foods rich in the vibrant natural pigment beta carotene, like orange carrots, sweet potatoes, and pumpkins, have the potential to turn your poops orange.
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