The things you learn: Day 19 of self-isolation

So there I was, desperately finding ways to not write or work, when something extraordinary landed at my feet. So a big thank you to Ausländer for the brilliant blip “O Du Schöne Teuere Spargelzeit”, from which the much of this information is shamelessly stolen.
 
I’m a big fan of asparagus – a late convert, actually, as I hated it as a youngster – and obviously one of the things I notice when I eat a big plateful of it is that later, when going to the toilet, my pee smells. This is because it contains a substance called mercaptan (which has, I think, some properties of sulphur). When your digestive system breaks it down and you have to go for a pee – no doubt aided by a good bottle of pinot blanc – it releases a compound called methanethiol, which evaporates pretty much instantaneously. As it evaporates, its odour is released and, given the reasonably close proximity of your nose to your urine, it hits you (as it were) straight between the eyes.
 
As I am in the process of trying to convince myself I am a writer, a process in which I am getting less and less adept at believing, I like to look for universalities. If I say character X is suffering from gout and has a sore toe, I like to think any gout sufferers reading it will nod silently to themselves and think “he knows what he is talking about, this novelist, what a supremely well-educated and well-rounded human being is, and he has done his research into gout symptoms perfectly.” So imagine my surprise when reading Ausländer’s post that I come across the following nugget: “urine only smells of asparagus to some people - it's a genetic thing.” I almost choked on my coffee.
 
How in the name of God can that be? How can some people smell it – surely that must be the vast majority of people, we normal ones, we that can smell the asparagus – and yet some not be able to? Have they all got colds or something? So I went looking. I found a health website (which I normally avoid like the plague – but as I am avoiding the plague in real life, I thought I’d chance it this time) and it told me (amongst many adverts for superfoods that can save my life and the Top 10 supplements for avoiding Covid19) the following: “a small study in 38 adults determined that about 8% of them either didn’t produce the smell or produced it at concentrations that were too low to be detected.”
 
This raised more questions than it answered. For example, who decided that the odour could not be detected? Is there a baseline asparagus-to-pee ratio that determines this? And who gets to smell it? Is there a trained asparagus by-product sommelier who, no doubt wearing a white shirt and bow tie, replete with elegant cummerbund, bends his nose – it has to be a man – towards the toilet bowl, sniffs in deeply (perhaps wafting his hand to subtly oxygenate the bouquet) and decides on the level of concentration and whether or not it is of a level that can be detected. “Yes,” he says. “Definite notes of methanethiol, probably mingled with salt, lemon and… and… a 2017 Alsatian Gewürztraminer.”
 
I suspect the size of the survey to mean only 38 people could be convinced to take part in this study – perhaps because the researcher was some well-known lunatic or asparagus fetishist – and given this fact, perhaps they were taking the piss (if you will excuse the pun) about not being able to smell it. So I went back to Ausländer to ask – and found already posted a hugely helpful study in guise if a pre-emptive answer to my earlier comment. So I had a look at the study and got a much better explanation.
 
This study was carried out at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the United States, where else, by Sarah Markt and the fabulously named Lorelei Mucci. These two (obviously neither lunatics nor asparagus fetishists) had managed to convince 6,909 people not only to pee into a test tube but also to eat asparagus (which is perhaps, on reflection, more difficult). They found that about 40 per cent of the participants were able to smell metabolites in their urine after eating asparagus, and 60 per cent could not. Sixty per cent! There is even a term for this band of weirdos (although if 60% of the population is an accurate figure, I had better be careful what I write): they are termed asparagus anosmic. I bet Donald Trump is one.
 
But why? Well, apparently it is a genetic deficiency (see!) and to prove the hypothesis, the researchers looked at nine million genetic variants in the asparagus anosmics and linked this deficiency to 871 individual sequence variations they discovered in chromosome 1, i.e. on genes associated with our sense of smell.
 
These figures, though, they set me to thinking a little more. If 60 per cent of the population can’t smell the asparagus in their own pee then that means they are in the majority (logic was a forte of mine at high school) and we 40 per cent are the weirdos. That can’t be right – surely it must mean we are gifted.
 
At dinner time, as Ottawacker Jr. helped Mrs. Ottawacker to prepare haddock with a butter source, together with steamed rice and a certain green vegetable, I related this story to my captive audience from my chair on the landing of the stairwell and was about to come to the grand finale, where I told my adoring family that I was gifted, when I was rudely interrupted.
 
“I knew that,” said Mrs. Ottawacker. “I think I told you a while ago. You never listen to a word I say.”
 
Elsewhere today, the snow is melting and part of our back garden has been revealed again. Also, the snow drift broke the fence.