Study Finds Tomatoes Thrive On Urine

An anonymous reader writes "Using human urine as a fertilizer produces bumper crops of tomatoes that are safe to eat, scientists have found. Their research was published last month in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry and may help cheaply boost crops in the developing world. From the article, 'Yields for plants fertilized with urine quadrupled and matched those of mineral-fertilized plants. The urine-fertilized tomatoes also contained more protein and were safe for human consumption.'"

Re:Urine is sterile

[Tim4444]

Sort of. The liver converts the toxins, read ammonia, into a safe chemical, read urea, and that's what the kidneys filter. I'm not sure but I don't think the urea would pass through the intestine walls back into the blood stream if ingested. It's more likely that it will dehydrate you due to osmosis since the kidneys do a great job of concentrating the urea. I don't believe we have digestive enzymes that work on urea so it would probably just pass through you. As for other toxins, if the body can get it out of the bloodstream once it can do it again. There's actually an old Japanese tradition of drinking your morning piss. I don't know of any health benefits, but as far as I know it didn't really do them any harm either.

As for tomatoes, I've heard of urea fertilizers, but it's usually bad practice to put waste from humans or carnivores on crops because you can pass on E. Coli and various diseases that way.