Three members of the Inside Edition digital team ate different amounts of poppy seeds to find out.
After a mom’s breakfast of a poppy seed bagel caused her to fail a drug test before she gave birth, we wanted to know: How many poppy seeds are too many?
For Episode 4 of The Breakdown, three members of the Inside Edition digital team ate different amounts of poppy seeds to find out.
The night before the experiment, each took home a drug test and passed. The next day, they were each given a different amount of poppy seeds to consume.
Nick Poppy (his real name) ate "several spoonfuls of poppy seeds," Maya Chung ate a whole poppy seed bagel, and Liz Lane ate half a poppy seed bagel.
Three hours later, they repeated the drug test — and all failed.
"Shocked," Liz said. "I am truly shocked that just half of a bagel led to a positive test."
What if, she asked, you didn’t know there were poppy seeds in your cake or you ate a bite of bagel, and tested positive? "Imagine if you lost your job over something like this?"
"Or your child?" Maya added.
There is, however, a higher threshold for professional tests than the take-home ones, Maya said.
"I also noticed that there are different regulations for different entities," she said. "So at a federal level it is at a certain threshold, but private companies might be at a different threshold and states might be at a different threshold."
So what did they learn?
"Don't eat poppy seed bagels before you have an opioid test to take," Maya said.
"Yeah, stick to sesame," Nick added.
Dr. Andrew Ordon, co-host of "The Doctors," said he was not surprised by the outcome of the test.
"These at-home tests are getting better and better and more sophisticated every day," he said.
There are two pieces of information to take away from the test, Dr. Ordon said.
"No. 1: Poppy seeds will make you test positive. And No. 2: If you're in the group of people that routinely may get tested, whether it's because of addiction issues or the job setting, then you need to be aware of this and you need to avoid poppy seed intake, I'm guessing for at least three days prior to testing," he said.
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