What’s going to come in has to come out – and that’s exactly why your poop can help dial your healthiest meals. Fecal color, consistency, and frequency can act as nutritional meters.
“When you’re eating right for you, your body produces good poop,” says DC Todd Sinett, founder of Tru Whole Care in New York City and author of The Good Sh*T.
Here, experts share what your poop health, color, frequency and consistency are strictly saying about the food on your plate. Health status can also affect poop health and quality, so if you are worried about something more serious, talk to your doctor.
Poop colour
Food coloring can only dye almost any color of the rainbow. However, if you haven’t had blue icing or black licorice in your diet recently, then each color can tell you about your intake.
What does brown poop mean?
Brown often portends your poop health and diet. The exact shade reflects GI transit times.
“We’ve seen a lot of trouble with our health,” said Bethany Dorffler of RDN, a gastrointestinal research specialist at the Northwest Medical Gastrointestinal Health Center in Chicago. If you have a rather dark or light poo, read on and learn which foods can speed up or slow down.
What does green poop mean?
Lettuce guess: Are you eating your greenery? Green vegetables, especially those with thick leaves rich in pigment chlorophyll, can color your feces with greenery, says Cinett. However, if food passes through the digestive tract and moves too much, it can cause green stools (also known as diarrhea). If you are familiar with this, check the following frequency:
What does red shit mean?
Beats are famous for making stools surprisingly red, but other naturally red-colored foods can also blush your defecation, Doerfler says. If you haven’t eaten red foods recently, talk to your doctor about your underlying health condition.
What does black slut mean?
Do you take iron supplements? Because, like Peptobis Mall, they can turn poop in a scary black color. But often requiring GI targeted drugs is a big clue that something may be off in your diet.
What does orange poo mean?
Beta-carotene, an orange pigment that gives carrots color, can theoretically give the dung a orange tint. In contrast to the whole vegetable, it is more likely to occur in carrot juice. To color the stool, you must eat an inhumane amount of carrots.
What does yellow poop mean?
“A pale yellow stool can be a sign of rapid movement of the intestines,” Doerfler said. “This is very common and comes from a high fiber diet.”
Poo Frequency and Consistency
“Consistency and frequency of bowel movements are important,” Doerfler said. And they tend to be related. If food is too fast in the digestive tract, it becomes watery. Rock hard constipation can occur if feces stall.
That said, there is no perfect poop timing to show the perfection of your meal. Everyone has their own schedule. Three times a day to three times a week to three times a week are considered normal.
If you have to go more or less frequently, or you notice a change in your schedule, you may be dealing with diarrhea or constipation.
The Bristol Scale classifies stools into seven types:
Type 1: Separate, Hard chunk type 2: Sausage type, Rugged type 3: Sausage type, Cracked surface type 4: Sausage type or smooth and soft type 5: Clear cut edge type 6: Shattered edge type 7: Completely liquid, no plain fragments
Types 1 and 2: Constipation
If you have hard, dry pellets, you may not get enough soluble fibers. Soluble fiber improves poop health and increases the amount of water in your stool to keep things moving, Doerfler says. If you are dealing with constipation, try consuming 2-4 servings of fruit every day.
Berries, fresh pears and kiwi are all very helpful in alleviating constipation. Also, check the colour of your pee, as you may not be consuming enough liquid every day. A straw or pale yellow color is your goal.
Types 3 and 4: Normal
Congratulations! This is the consistency you are aiming for. Eating a wide range of nutrients, meeting your fiber needs and avoiding foods that exacerbate your digestive tract, Cinett says that the majority of your daily bowel movements falls into this category.
A lump of food
“It’s normal to see food that hasn’t been digested on a stool,” Doerfler said. “It simply means you didn’t break the fibers completely.”
Type 5-7: Diarrhea
A great many foods and dietary habits can cause diarrhea. These include caffeine, alcohol, spicy foods, and calorie-free sweeteners such as sorbitol, mannitol and xylitol, Doerfler says.
Diarrhea can also occur when the overall fiber content is lacking. “We can use fibers to inflate and thicken the stool,” Doerfler says.
Finally, you may not be able to stand one or more foods you are eating.
Greasy floater
“The fat on a stool is not normally normal unless you eat nearly 100 grams of fat every day,” Doerfler said. If you are following the ketogenic diet, that is certainly possible, but if your fat intake is not as extreme, talk to your doctor about the potential causes of malabsorption.
I’ll track the poop
“I love tracking patients’ food intake,” Doerfler said. Just focusing on what’s in and what happens between the week and week can provide you with a lot of valuable information about genuinely agreeing to your system.
Before making any fundamental changes to your diet, consult your doctor, gastroenterologist, or registered dietitian, such as removing the entire food group, to make sure you are still intake of the nutrients you need.
“If you notice clear patterns of eating and changing bowel symptoms, such as bloating or loose stool, we discuss these patterns with your doctor or nutritionist and develop a game plan,” she says.
Also, when assessing the effects of different foods on your feces health, Sinnett says, pay attention to what you feel, not just what you see. Ideally, you should feel relieved after each poop. It inflates remaining pain, discomfort, or all signal GI pain.
