Poppy seeds and drug testing

[Fuji_Kitakyusho]

Will poppy seed bagels or muffins make me show a false positive on a drug test?

-FK

[Revtim]

On MTV’s ‘Urban Legends’ show, they appeared to prove that eating a single poppy-seed bagle can cause a false positive.

They had two teens test one day, and got clean reports. The next day, one of them ate the bagel, and they both got tests again (I think at a different lab). The one that ate the bagel tested positive.

Cecil did a column on this too, maybe search the archives.

[c_goat]

I was going to post about the Urban Legends show too, so I’ll just second it. The doctor didn’t believe that they just ate a bagel, he said it wasn’t possible. I’m assuming MTV was following them for 24 hours to make sure they didn’t do anything else.

[Ethilrist]

From the masters:

Claim: The consumption of the poppy seeds used on bagels and muffins can cause positive results on drug screening tests.

Status: True.

Opiates (morphine and codeine) can be detected in urine for at least 48 hours after one eats food containing poppy seeds. As little as a single bagel covered with poppy seeds could produce a false positive test for these drugs.

[critter42]

TLC or Discovery had their own Urban Legends series, where two special-fx guys would attempt to recreate various urban legends to see if they were possible. They tackled the poppy-seed question. Once ate a package of poppy-seed bagels, and the other ate poppy-seed cakes. They used one of the “home-test” packages, and eventually both tested postive for opiates. What struck them was how LONG they continued to test positive after they ate the comestibles.
IIRC, they did note that

1. The amount they consumed was way more than the average person might eat at one sitting
2. The home tests are not as accurate as one of the laboratory tests.
   Even given those two, it was still very enlightening - IMHO, one of the best segments of the series (my other favorite was them attempting to re-create the old JATO/Impala saw - not from any possibility that it could have happened, just from the pure macho fun of seeing a 60’s Car with 4 jets attached to it driven by remote control over the salt flats )

critter42

[hawthorne]

From our actual master: Will poppy-seed bagels cause you to fail a drug test?

[Padeye]

TheLadyLion makes a poppyseed streudel that is sure to put one over the limite on opate metabolites. This isn’t just a few poppyseeds sprinkled on top but a thick filling layer of boiled poppyseeds. It would be interesting to get a baseline test after eating some of this.

[Little_Nemo]

What struck them was how LONG they continued to test positive after they ate the comestibles.

Opiate traces last in the system a long time. They’re readily detectable by urinalysis for at least a month. In fact, in the NY prison system, an inmate can’t be charged for failing a second urine test within sixty days of a previous one because it’s considered double jeopardy. Incidentally, inmates and parolees are also prohibited from eating poppy seed baked goods.