When stools suddenly change color, it’s like your digestive system’s way of throwing a little colorful surprise! Different hues can pop up due to various harmless reasons. For instance, eating lots of beets can tint your stool a reddish-purple, while spinach or other leafy greens might turn it green. Sometimes, medicine or supplements, like iron pills, can darken stools to almost black. Yellow stools can indicate that food is moving through the gut a bit too quickly, mixing with extra bile that gives it that buttery shade. And pale or clay-colored stools? They happen when bile pigments, which usually give stool its brown tone, are temporarily low. So next time you spot an unexpected color in the bowl, remember—it’s often just your body’s colorful way of saying, “Hey, check out what I’m digesting today!”