FDA warn against cooking chicken in cough medicine following TikTok trend

This week in unhinged TikTok trends:

The American Food and Drug Administration have issued a warning against cooking chicken in NyQuil, an over-the-counter cough medicine.

The so-called “sleepy chicken” recipe involves cooking raw chicken in NyQuil, which is known to cause drowsiness. However, the FDA have warned of the serious dangers of following the trend – even if you don’t eat the chicken.

In a statement, the FDA writes:

Boiling a medication can make it much more concentrated and change its properties in other ways. Even if you don’t eat the chicken, inhaling the medication’s vapors while cooking could cause high levels of the drugs to enter your body. 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. 

They also reference an earlier TikTok challenge, which encouraged people to take large doses of the allergy medicine diphenhydramin in an attempt to induce hallucinations. Following news reports of teenagers needing to go to the emergency room or, in some cases, dying after participating in this challenge, the FDA issued a warning about the danger of high doses of diphenhydramine.

Essentially, if you were considering marinating your chicken in Calpol, you might want to reconsider.

Header image via TikTok/glammie53

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