<P> An episode of MythBusters tested this legend and found that as little as three poppy - seed bagels was enough to cause a positive result for the remainder of the day they were eaten (though participants tested clean the following day). The results of this experiment are inconclusive, however, because a test was used with an opiate cutoff level of 300 ng / mL instead of the current SAMHSA recommended cutoff level used in the NIDA 5 test, which was raised from 300 ng / mL to 2,000 ng / mL in 1998 in order to avoid such false positives from poppy seeds . </P> <P> Despite these measures, false positives do still occur, such as in the case of a mother whose newborn baby was taken into care for five days after she tested positive for opiates because of an "everything" bagel from Dunkin' Donuts . </P> <P> In addition, poppy seed consumption does not serve as a defense for heroin consumption . This is because a unique metabolite (6 - monoacetylmorphine) is produced from heroin use that is never produced from consuming any other substance, even other opiates like the ones present in poppy seeds . Modern tests can thus readily determine whether it was heroin or some other opiate that was ingested, should someone who had used heroin try to claim he or she merely ate poppy seeds . It is widely believed that there is no way to distinguish between poppy seeds and any other kind of opiate . However, a study published by the University of Connecticut's Department of Chemistry proposed that thebaine could be used as a marker of poppy seed consumption . They examined the urine of test subjects given 11 grams of poppy seeds, the urine of heroin users and clean urine spiked with thebaine, as a reference for GC - MS . They also tested street heroin, 1 morphine tablet and 1 codeine tablet . Urine specimens were screened by EMIT and confirmed for thebaine by GC - MS using a solid - phase extraction method . Only the subjects who had consumed the poppy seeds had thebaine in their urine, with concentrations ranging from 2 to 81 ng / mL with a limit of detection of 0.5 ng / mL . Thebaine was not detected in any of the tested powdered drugs (street heroin, morphine tablet, codeine tablet) or the urine of the heroin users . </P>

Even less drug gets into a tooth that's got separate sections