RT Journal
A1 Reimann HA
T1 Re: Red urine
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 1979
FD June 1
VO 241
IS 22
SP 2380
OP 2380
DO 10.1001/jama.1979.03290480014009
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.1979.03290480014009
AB To the Editor.— 
    Eating highly pigmented vegetables can cause a more alarming result than purple-red stools (240:2733, 1978). One morning, on arising, a healthy 65-year-old man, whose two brothers had died of cancer of the bladder, voided bright-red urine. His fright abated when his wife did the same. Both had eaten boiled garden-fresh beets the evening before. The answer was "beeturia." His physician then ate half a can of preserved beets, but without similar result. Evidently, the pigment betaine can be excreted unchanged in the urine of some persons and not in others. The canned beets might have had as much as 50% of the betaine destroyed by heating; thus, it was unavailable to the physician's metabolic processes. Alternatively, the physician-experimenter might be a "metabolizer."