A common excuse for getting fired is about to go away, if one U.K. specialty foods company has its way. FDL, a company that supplies the food service industry with specialized ingredients, has created a low-morphine poppy seed that won’t influence the results of a drug test.
Believe it or not, it’s no urban legend: Eating a poppy seed bagel before a drug test can get you fired. Testing can rule out heroin, but not other opiates, according to the New York Times. This gave rise to the “poppy seed defense” as a way of explaining away a drug test result — whether that excuse was honest or not. In 1998, the limit for morphine was raised to 2,000 nanograms per milliliter to ward off some of these false positives (previously, it was 300 nanograms per milliliter). But if you eat a lot of poppy seed cake and other baked goods, you could still test in that range.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLumw9JonainlGTEsXuRaWhwZ2BrfHN8jp%2Bgp5mcocZuvM6pp7Jlo5qypb%2BMrZ%2BarF2svK%2FAjKaYpJ1drry2ecWaoKVlqaTCs3nDq6ygZaSawLV7