Data dump: Toto’s smart toilet analyzes your waste to tell you about your health

The Toto Wellness Toilet, which analyzes your deposits to make dietary recommendations.
(Image credit: Toto)

You sit on the toilet, happily contemplating life's mysteries while doing your business. At the same time, the Toto Wellness smart toilet is going about its  business, which involves analyzing the products of your business to figure out what's wrong with you.

When you're finished, the Toto Wellness Toilet sends you a message on your phone: "Your diet seems unbalanced. The recommended recipe is Salmon/Chicken Avocado Salad."

That's right. The Toto Wellness Toilet, unveiled at the CES 2021 virtual conference, is the world's first commode that actually examines your poop and then tells you how to make it better next time. 

"Toilets and people have two unique touchpoints that cannot be found elsewhere — the skin and human waste," says Toto's memorable press release. 

"The WELLNESS TOILET is in direct contact with individuals' skin when they are sitting on it, and it analyzes the waste they deposit — a wealth of wellness data can be collected from fecal matter."

We'll take their word for it. It's not really clear exactly how the Wellness Toilet picks this all out, but Toto states that the thinking throne "uses multiple cutting-edge sensing technologies to support consumers' wellness." 

In addition, the commode also scans your body "and its key outputs" to provide additional recommendations on improving your health. Presumably, this means things such as heart rate. It also somehow determines your "mental and physical status."

A dietary recommendation from the Toto Wellness Toilet.

Someone's not getting enough fatty acids. (Image credit: Toto)

Unfortunately, this breakthrough in bathroom technology will not arrive quite just yet — Toto expects to bring it "to the residential market in the next several years."

We expect that you'll be paying a lot for the Toto Wellness Toilet. But it will probably make your existing toilet seem like something from a gas-station men's room.

Paul Wagenseil

Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom's Guide focused on security and privacy. He has also been a dishwasher, fry cook, long-haul driver, code monkey and video editor. He's been rooting around in the information-security space for more than 15 years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom's Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown up in random TV news spots and even moderated a panel discussion at the CEDIA home-technology conference. You can follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.