Will eating a poppyseed bagel really test you positive for Opium usage?

The answer is yes. A poppyseed bagel will test you positive for opium usage. Opium is made from oppyseeds, plus it was actually tested.

Yes it could possibly make you test positive for opiate usage. Unfortunately you can''t get high off them no matter how many you eat. :bnghd:

Ah well, there go my plans...>.

About Poppy Seeds and Urinalysis

I had always heard that this was an urban legend, that it would take hundreds of bagels to prompt a false-positive. Guess not...

[edit on 17-10-2006 by tommyb98201]

It will make you test positive.

Happened when I was 17.

My doctor asked me, "Have you been taking opium?" and all I caould say was, "What??"

True story

Thank god they don't do drug testing at my workplace...I'd be screwed! I love my poppyseed bagels.

Haha I want to eat one and go get a drug test done...JUST to see what my doctor says. MY doctor would probibly ask for some xD

they tested this on mythbusters, he ate 8 poppy seed bagels, or 7, somet like that, and tested positive for heroine in one of the 3 widely used drugs tests he tried.

I use to drug test my employees when I first started my business, cause I was ignorant like that

Anywho, my original building was a cross the street from a Great Canadian Bagel.

ALL of my employees at there regularily.

Needless to say there were a lot of people who got fired until I realized what was going on..

~Keeper

The seeds that are used for food are a by-product to the production of pharmaceutical opiates, the high yield poppies that are grown to produce morphine and the likes. They are supposed to be dead, unable to germinate, but there's no reliable way to ensure this.

They might have you test positive on a drug test if you eat them but selling them could potentially land you in front of a judge, charged as a drug lord.

Even Mythbusters covered this in an episode.

Mind you why you would eat poppyseed cake anyway is a bit questionable.

Well it is a trick question, it is yes and no. It depends on the test given.
So yes it can create a false positive for "opium" but that is really misleading.
Just checking the strip of paper in the pee is not the proper way to administer a drug test. First the sample is given then if it comes back positive it gets sent to a lab at which point it is looked over to rule out false positives. The ammount in a poppy seed bagel and the ammount needed to get you high are VERY different ammounts. At the lab they can check the levels and it would be very easy to see. I worked at a drug rehab and have just about seen everything, there are numerous things that give you a false positive but the lab will always sort it out. I even failed my drug test on my first day, i had a cold and took some cough medicine and it showed i used meth.

Well, from first hand experience:

NO, I didn't test positive for opiates when I took a urine analysis.

I ate an entire loaf of poppy seed bread the day before...
Funny how those things work out.
But it was around the holidays and that poppy seed bread was SO delicious. I ate the whole thing.

Needless to say I was seriously worried and asked the nurse giving me the test if it would show.
She said no.

So all the assumptions are based on the type of test I suppose?
I had an enormous amount of poppy seeds in my system and it didn't even register.

I can't attest to the other posters.
I just know what happened when I ate the stuff and took a test.

Originally posted by thegreatestone
they tested this on mythbusters,

Yep, the test showed positive. I always poked fun at people who believed this to be true but apparently there will be some opiate traces in your urine if you eat a poppyseed bagel or muffin.

Good thing I'm not looking for a job. I would be sooooo screwed if they administered the drug test that tests for Opium usage.

I eat a lot of Poppy seeds. Every morning I have a Poppy seed muffin, I usually have poppy seed bread and about once every 2 weeks I have a poppy seed cake.

If you know of anything else made of poppy seeds please tell me, I am addicted to them. They taste soooo good.

From what I remember the poppy seed bagel issue was known in the 90s and the Clinton administration bumped up the trigger threshold to something relatively high (2000 ng/ml from what I remember). This should eliminate MOST false positives from food ingestion. Although I have heard it said that two poppy seed bagels a day on a somewhat regular basis will indeed trigger the positive result.

They also did this on that Food Science show on the Food Network.

A bagel wouldnt do it. A muffin wouldnt do it. But eating a piece of cake absolutely coated with so many seeds it must have been crunchy did it.

Does that mean there is some minute amount of the drug in the seeds? Like getting high off of nutmeg?

If so how many pounds of seeds would you have to process to get a dose?

That would be interesting. If only to see the federal government track and limit the sale of poppy seeds and foods with poppy seeds.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


It's not cause there's actual opium in the seeds or anything, it's just that the chemical mimicks opium very closely. Urinalisis isnt' a perfect science.

~Keeper

You have to keep in mind timing is also an issue and has to be perfect. If you ate a loaf of poppy seed bread a day before it ight not show up, if you used a gram of heroin 5 min before the urine test it also may not show up. Also take into account why you are being drug tested. People get tested at work for pre-employment, post incident and suspicion. If you are getting tested for having pin hole sized pupils and almost drowning in a cup of coffee you spilled when you fell face first into your desk as you nodded off. You are going to have a very hard time explaining to your boss how that was in no way drug related and your drug test was positive because your diet is high in poppy seed breads.
I did learn some funny things durring my employment at a rehab.

As far as i know there is no way to use drugs and pass a urine test using urine comming from your body at the time of the test.
If you drink a LOT of water before a test it can show a false positive. It does not show that you used a drug but the test will show that it was tampered with, at which point it gets sent to the lab and it is seen if it does have any drugs in there. This works with the cranberry juice myth also.
Taking large ammonts of niacin turn you beet red and makes you sweat, it will also not help you pass a drug test but make you look like you are on drugs when you are informed that you failed your drug test.
Drinking large ammounts of vinegar will make you throw up, give you really bad diarrhea and let you fail a drug test.