Why Does Asparagus Make Your Pee Smell Funny?

The asparagus has a long and storied history. It was mentioned in the myths and the scholarly writings of ancient Greece, and its cultivation was the subject of a detailed lesson in Cato the Elder’s treatise, On Agriculture. But it wasn’t until the turn of the 18th century that discussion of the link between asparagus and odorous urine emerged. In 1731, John Arbuthnot, physician to Queen Anne, noted in a book about food that asparagus “affects the urine with a foetid smell…and therefore have been suspected by some physicians as not friendly to the kidneys.” Benjamin Franklin also noticed that eating asparagus “shall give our urine a disagreeable odor.”