Five-minute test that says if your diet’s healthy

A FIVE-minute test developed by British scientists can tell someone exactly how healthy their diet is.

The urine test analyses biological markers created by the breakdown of foods such as red meat, chicken, fish and fruit and vegetables.

It also gives an indication of how much fat, sugar, fibre and protein a person has eaten in the last 24 hours.

Results from the test, which its developers at Imperial College London hope will be available within two years, would be ready at a local health centre in a matter of minutes and could be used to help dieters keep food consumption on track or give GPs a picture of what a patient has eaten.

Research has suggested that 60 per cent of people could not accurately say what they have consumed.

An official report published last year found that secret snackers are partly to blame for Britain’s obesity crisis – with the average person consuming 50 per cent more calories a day than they thought.

They tend to under-report consumption of unhealthy food and over-report fruit and vegetable intake. The likelihood of inaccuracy increases if a person is overweight.

This is either because we do not admit to consuming guilty treats, or do not realise how much we are snacking.

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. This test could be the first independent indicator of the quality of a person’s diet.’

The researchers, whose work is published in the journal Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, developed the urine test by tracking 19 volunteers asked to follow four different diets, ranging from very healthy to very unhealthy, for 72 hours.

The research team assessed urine samples for hundreds of compounds, called metabolites, produced when certain foods are broken down in the body.

These included compounds that indicate red meat, chicken, fish, fruit and vegetables, as well as giving a picture of the amount of protein, fat, fibre and sugar eaten. They also included compounds that point to specific foods such as citrus fruits, grapes and green leafy vegetables.

The researchers were then able to develop a urine metabolite profile that indicated a healthy, balanced diet.

This is compared to the diet profile from an individual’s urine, providing an instant indicator of whether they are eating healthily.

The scientists trialled the test on 300 volunteers to check its accuracy.

Dr Isabel Garcia Perez, co-author from Imperial, added: ‘We’re not at the stage where the test can tell us a person ate 15 chips and two sausages, but it’s on the way.’

Professor Elaine Holmes of Imperial added: ‘The idea would be to collect a urine sample at home and deliver it to a local centre for analysis.’