The Blue Dye Meal is designed to be an at home, noninvasive measure of GI transit time. Traditional measures of GI transit time require nuclear medical imaging. The participant swallows a radioactive tracer and has multiple scans over a few hours. While these methods yeild more detailed results than the blue dye meal, its possible to get a transit measure with just blue dye.
This method was popularized with the #bluepoopchallenge. The Muffin recipe and procedure detailed on this site were invented by Julia Dallman PhD and Baharak Moshiree MD in 2020.
Before starting the blue dye tests participants must complete a 6-8 hour overnight fast.
If the person completing the test is using a feeding tube muffins can be substituted with blue dye added to a meal kit
If a blue dye meal kit was provided to you as part of a study you should freeze it until it is time to complete the test.
Eat Blue Meal
When meal is finished record time
If you are participating in a study your meal kit will be shipped to you. If you want to try the muffins on your own the recipe is down below.
Start Recording Bowel Movements
The first bowel movement might not be blue yet
First Blue Bowel Movement
Eventually you should have a blue/green bowel movement
Keep Recording
The number of blue bowel movements may vary
Last Blue Bowel Movement
You won't know it until you record a regular colored bowel movement
End of test
The first brown bowel movement after a blue one marks the end of the test. Mark down you're transit time and lag phase.
First Blue Bowel Movement Time
- Blue Meal Finish Time
= Transit Time Last Blue Bowel Movement Time
- First Blue Bowel Movement Time
= Lag Phase- 3 Large egg whites
- 1/2 Teaspoon Cream of tartar
- 1 Tablespoon Sugar
- 2 Tablespoons Smuckers Seedless Raspberry Jam
- 2 Tablespoons King Arthur Gluten-Free ‘Measure for measure’ Flour
- 1 1/2 Teaspoon soy protein powder
- 1 Teaspoon McCormick blue food coloring
- Pre-heat oven to 350° F
- Use electric beaters to beat egg whites with cream of tartar and sugar for 1 minute or until soft peaks form
- Add 2 Tablespoons jam and continue to beat for 30 seconds
- Add flour in two batches, 1 Tablepoon at a time, and beat for a full minute after each addition
- Add protein powder and beat until incorporated
- Line muffin tins with parchment paper and fill two of these with batter
- Cook 30 minutes or until internal temperature reaches 206° F
| Macros | Egg Whites | Sugar | Jam | Flour | Protein Powder | Butter/Oil | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carbs | 45 | 100 | 38.7 | 183.7 | |||
| Protein | 51 | 1.6 | 10 | 62.6 | |||
| Fat | 5.1 | 5.1 | |||||
| Fiber | 3.2 | 3.2 | |||||
| All | 254.6 |
The Blue Muffin recipe is designed to match the nutritional compostion of the consensus baseline meal for Gastric emptying scintigraphy (GES).
The standard scintigraphic meal for GE should consist of an egg-white meal (Egg Beaters® or generic equivalent) radiolabeled with 0.5–1 mCi 99mTc. The meal has a caloric value of 255 kcal (nutritional composition: 72% carbohydrate, 24% protein, 2% fat, and 2% fiber).
Consensus Recommendations for Gastric Emptying Scintigraphy: A Joint Report of the American Neurogastroenterology and Motility Society and the Society of Nuclear Medicine
Thomas L. Abell, Michael Camilleri, Kevin Donohoe, William L. Hasler, Henry C. Lin, Alan H. Maurer, Richard W. McCallum, Thomas Nowak, Martin L. Nusynowitz, Henry P. Parkman, Paul Shreve, Lawrence A. Szarka, William J. Snape, Harvey A.
Ziessman Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology Mar 2008, 36 (1) 44-54; DOI: 10.2967/jnmt.107.048116