The Lucozade Pee Chart

There is such a thing, and it's a seriously useful publication.

The pee chart (and it really is called that) looks a little bit like an excerpt from one of those wee brochures you pick up from the paint shop, when you can't quite decide what colour you want to paint your walls.

There are three categories - Target; Dehydration; Severe Dehydration. Each of these categories is split into numbers and shades, 1 being the ultimate target, and 6 being the most severely dehydrated (I'm not sure if it's possible to score off the chart in either direction).

What I like most about this chart is that it's extremely considerate. It tells me that "when you are well hydrated, your pee should be the colour of pale straw." Now here, I'll confess, I sensed a flaw. I'm a bit of a city boy (or town at least) and I've no idea what colour pale straw is. I mean, show me two piles of straw and I could tell you which is paler, but I'd have no idea of it was pale straw, or just paler than the less-pale straw. So to help me out, Lucozade kindly follow with a much more useful sentence: "This relates to colour 1 or 2 on the chart". Good Lord! I now know that pale straw is the colour of my pee when I'm well hydrated!

There's also a bit that explains the effect of body water loss on performance. This is useful... I now know that at 2% I suffer impaired performance (maybe we should introduce a pee test for drivers?) and at 4% my capacity for muscular work declines (maybe we should introduce a pee test for labourers). 6% results in Heat exhaustion, 8 % in Hallucination, and 10% in Circulatory Collapse and Heat Strokes.

Now here is a missed opportunity. I quite fancy the idea of some mild hallucination, but Lucozade don't give any indication of the colour of your pee versus the % of dehydration! I don't want to overshoot the mark and go straight to Circulatory Collapse or Heat Stroke. But I guess they have to protect themselves, as what if i you got to your 8% sooner than expected, but hallucinated that your pee was the colour of pale straw, and next thing you know you're facing Circulatory Collapse and Heat Stroke? 10% spells L-I-T-I-G-A-T-I-O-N.

For your information, it would appear that I'm usually somewhere between 4 (lower Dehydration) and 5 (upper Severe Dehydration). I'm sorry that I can't tell you farmers where in agriculture you'll see similar colours.

This is the sad thing I've discovered though... when my pee is the colour of pale straw, I piss like a frikken race-horse. My body seems to like being 4 or 5, and does its best to dehydrate me again when I'm trying to hydrate it!

Either way, please sign below if you'd like to see Crown or Dulux re-name some of their shades to tie in with the Lucozade pee chart. If we raise awareness, paint-shades will no longer be the exclusive property of women and effeminate men... Like street-signs in Welsh AND English, we'll be able to tell (thanks to Lucozade and our own pee) that when women say they want to paint the walls "magnolia" they really mean "Stage 2 - Target Hydration".

However, do not misinterpret the request as "Invite the boys round, drink 5 litres of water each, and piss up the walls."