The US Food and Drug Administration has warned about a dangerous food challenge. However, the warning has had the opposite effect — and instead spurred searches for it.
This is a potentially deadly trend in which idiots are cooking chicken in NyQuil has gone viral to the point where the brand is now issuing warnings on its social media accounts.
Known as the “NyQuil chicken” or “sleepy chicken” challenge on TikTok and other social platforms, the trend involves marinating chicken breasts in the NyQuil cold and flu syrup and then eating the results.
According to BuzzFeed News,
There were only five searches for NyQuil chicken content on the app on Sept. 14, one day before the FDA posted its statement. By Sept. 21, there were 1,400 times as many searches on the topic, with around 7,000 searches recorded.
The FDA said, “Boiling a medication can make it much more concentrated and change its properties in other ways.” The agency went on to say that even inhaling the medication’s vapors while cooking could cause high levels of the drugs to enter your body.
The warning continued, “It could also hurt your lungs. Put simply: Someone could take a dangerously high amount of the cough and cold medicine without even realizing it.”
It’s unclear why the FDA chose now to issue the warning about the challenge when the videos have been circulating online for months.
Videos primarily from TikTok show people cooking chicken breasts in skillets and pouring large amounts of the liquid medication into the pan, coating and submerging the meat in it. This medication contains acetaminophen, dextromethorphan Hbr, and doxylamine succinate.
NyQuil has also tweeted about the challenge, which appears to have brought more attention to the situation as well as many others.
MSNBC”s Matt Negrin tweeted, “Why’d they call it nyquil chicken and not robitusserie?”
