I commented on this earlier. In my experience (it's amazing the things we talk about here), eating a lot of fresh beets (by that I mean roasted or boiled whole beets, rather than canned) leads to a noticeable pink/purple color in both pee and poop for about 12-24 hours. It does look somewhat like blood, which freaked out my friend.

Generally beets will appear more pinkish in your stools or urine. Blood will appear black after going through the digestive system. Unless you are suffering from hemorrhoids, then the blood will appear red, but thicker. Beet juice will be thin and watery and mix with the toilet water creating a Kool-aid effect. Blood will be thicker and won't mix with toilet water as easily. My advice, be comfortable with who you are, and don't look for too many answers in the toilet before you flush!

Anytime I eat beets, I pee pink and poo red. And fast, like stinky asparagus pee, right after you eat it.

Freaked me out the first time.

Over the weekend, everything was back to normal, brown Bristol 4's. Looks like beets were the issue. Scared me for a bit. Now to finish off all those beets in my fridge... :)

Just for future reference...stool that is dark due to blood will also likely smell like onions. My mom had this issue, but didn't realize it was blood at first. She kept trying to figure out when she had eaten enough onion to cause the odor. (She had Crohn's disease and colon cancer, so she was VERY aware of her diet and BM relationship)

She ended up in the hospital after noting frank blood in the toilet after BM. After she used the toilet in the hospital a nurse went in to take the sample. As soon as the nurse walked in we heard her exclaim "Woo! Someone has blood in their stool!" and told us the onion smell was common with that.

So, short story long...if you ate a lot of beets and your poo is dark and does NOT smell like onion, its probably the beets (as you already deduced).

Minus 1 for no photo of beet stool

I had a binge one time on the TerraChip "Sweets and Beets" chips.

The next day, I swore I shat a kidney, same color and everything.

No lie, I freaked out. I called my wife and told her I think I need to go to the emergency room.

I could hear her roll her eyes through the phone. She simply replied "You ate a whole bag of beet chips yesterday".

"Oh... yeah. So... how is your day?"

A friend and I had the same experience and it was beets.

Sometimes we get bulk beets and we feed them to the animals. When I feed my goats and chickens beets, we have red goat pellets and burgundy red chicken poo everywhere. The goat pee is hot pink too. It's quite the color fiesta! And, yes, mine is the same.

I forgot to add:

I've been easing into Paleo for 2 months now. Last Friday I broke 2 weeks of very strick paleo (+wine) and had some legumes and a sugary desert, which resulted in my vomiting 15 min later. Since then I've been a strict conformist to paleo (no grains, legumes, or dairy) with the exception of occasional bits of cheese, and some wine. I also started taking Now Foods Super Enzymes the day before the first BM in question.

I would imagine it's the beets. My poop has been mainly greenish since starting paleo, and I read up that (though green poop CAN be an indicator of a more serious issue, like poor digestion for example) this can be caused by having a lot of greenstuffs in your diet, green=chlorophyll. I remember when I was 6 or 7, I binged on blueberries and pooped purple for a few days. I was enthralled!

You work in health care - isn't there a test or something you can do, or some way to actually find out? I would imagine that might be more reliable than a interweb forum..

Thanks so much for this! Whew!

It's the beets, I'm guessing. Supposedly, this is also a sign you have low stomach acid. Try taking some HCL next time you have a beet binge, and see if that changes anything.

Thank You!! I too was freaking out thinking I had a kidney infection because of pink pee after eating beets. I was ready to go to the doctor. Who knew?

I recently found a recipe for fresh beets and experienced the red pee and poop both times I ate the beets. Funny, I have been eating canned beets all my life with no problem. Tells u something about the processing.

I'm sure it's beetroot, I ate some the other day and thought for a split second there was loads of blood in my stool! But yea it was just the beets

I don't know about the beets, though this past week I have been on a Parsley eating spree. Got a good deal on a big bunch. Eaten a little bit each meal. Great for the breath I heard. I also have been sitting in this nice chair watching a bit more television than I should and not drinking enough water lately hasn't helped. Had blood in my stools and I am worried. Worst is I don't have insurance. I always thought I had problems with Symptoms of Hemorrhoids. Sitting in one spot too long. I had an episode after seeing a movie awhile back. My Boyfriend got really worried too, said it was from drinking a few beers that weekend. I haven't had a drink of any alcohol for the last 10 days. I am really confused. I try to eat healthy and this year I have planted a few vegetables out in the backyard. Working outside is so relaxing as long as it's cool enough and with summer here I have to watch out how long I stay outside. Any help and/or suggestions is greatly appreciated ?!!

I had beets on Friday, pees pink and pooed red sunday, pooped red again on tuesday and then in cleared up. The red in the poo eminated from the poo like cool aid when you put the powder in water. i was relieved to read similare experiences on this site. Whew, Thanks!!!

Thank the Lord I read this, I was sooo scared, my poo seemed to have alot of blood in it, and I then thought could it have been all the beetroot I ate yesterday, it seems it was, thank you all, thankyou, thankyou.

I have heard of beets showing up in poo but NEVER heard of it showing up in pee. So now I'm on my way to a urologist when in fact I ate beets. Three huge ones, I had to eat them over a period of 4 days so when the red pee started I never never connected. Thanks for all these comments. Must cancel other appts....haha

Thank you ALL for posting about your pee and poo...without it I would have gone to the emergency room for sure. Today I had 1/2 of a Veggie Berry smoothie by Naked. 1 hour later during my regular morning trip to the restroom I thought I was DYING. My stool was blood red and there was a ton of the red stuff. I read the label of the smoothie and found out that the first 3 ingredients were Cherry Juice, Purple Carrot Juice and Beet Juice. That's when I went to net to find out if I was justified in panicking or if it was the beets. Thank you for the piece of mind.

Hey, I got really scared, too. But then i recalled i had plenty of boiled beets for dinner a day before. Two days ago I also started taking ZANTAC because i had problem with too much acid..... anyway what i think happened, zantac decreaed the amount of acid and therefore beets have not been completely dissolved.... I`m glad i found this website, just for reassurance..

+1 for the beets. Every time I have raw beats in a smoothie, I get that nasty moment of fear that I am hemoraging internally! As with dogs, best test is a 'challange' ...... Once you are back to 'normal' try a large serving of beats and see what happens. Be warned, the more raw the more intense the color!

I clicked on this linking cringing but anticipating a picture. Son, I am dissapoint.

Taste it and see?

I almost had a heart attack a few moments ago.... Went to the bathroom, did my thing, checked the results before flushing and saw a dark thing sunk in the middle of a reddish pond.....my heart started pounding super fast, palpitations, sweaty hands.... then I thought may be my wife is in "those" days and forgot to flush? I was ready to wake her up either to diss her for not flushing or if it wasnt her fault to drive me to the ER.... Then reading one of the replies I remembered that I ate a bag of beet chips yesterday....God I can go to bed now...

Thanks for this website. I too thought I needed to call the doctor. I juiced three whole raw beets over a period of two days and my BM was red today. It looked like reddish oink in the toilet and little tiny clumps of red. I am glad to read that it's the beets rather than something serious!

I ate a can of beets twice and both times I had the Kool aide effect once the next day and the other the same day. I figured it was the beets, but I needed confirmation, thanks every one. I do love those little bastards chilled right out of the can.

Lol, we made beets for dinner one night and teased the kid that it would turn their poop red. The little one took one bite and ran to the bathroom to see.

Kids aren't too crazy about beets but we like them. I especially like beet kvass whi h I've been making lately.