A blue chicken scented with cold syrup? Without a doubt, this recipe would have no chance of appearing on a menu without the existence of the Internet and social networks. However, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) called in a press release in mid-September not to use Nyquil (a cold and flu medicine, marketed in North America) for cooking chicken, as shown some videos on TikTok.
“Boiling a drug can make it much more concentrated and change its properties in other ways,” and “even if you don’t eat the chicken, inhaling drug vapors while cooking can cause high levels of the drug in your body,” he warns. the FDA, which speaks of potential lung damage.
But this warning, aimed at preventing more people from embarking on this dubious recipe, seems instead to have had a magnifying effect on the issue.
From 5 searches to more than 7000
A TikTok spokesperson told BuzzFeed that as of September 14, only five searches for “chicken Nyquil” had been identified on its social network, but that as of September 21, 6 days after the FDA release, that number stood at about 7,000 searches.
You can also read about this increase in searches for Nyquil on Google Trends, with an increase on September 19, four days after the FDA press release was published.
So it appears that the FDA press release warned of a social media “trend” that didn’t really exist, at least prior to their press release. the New York Times Note in passing that Chicken Nyquil is not new and most of the videos shared on social media are actually several years old.
A not really new “recipe”
This medicated prescription would come from the American 4chan forum, and has been taken over the years. BuzzFeed highlights posting photos of a chicken cooked in this blue-green syrup in 2017, but the recipe appears to be more of a joke than an actual dish to try. Last January, the same “trend” of chicken with Nyquil had already been pointed out.
“It’s not a fad, people don’t cook chicken in Nyquil and say it’s good,” says Jeff Yates, a journalist for Décrypteurs, a fact checking Radio-Canada, according to whom it is a joke.
“You run the risk of hurting yourself or others”
Regardless, it’s hard to find a video of someone who has recently tried this recipe. All the latest clips show netizens disgusted by this cuisine, or warning it not to be played.
However, since the FDA press release, TikTok has added to videos that evoke the theme of warning messages: “By engaging in this activity, you risk injury to yourself or others.”
On Twitter the product account Nyquil calls him back, in response to netizens. referring to this challenge, that their “products are very safe when used as directed.” No one has been seriously hurt or injured to date.
Source: BFM TV
