Food Theory: Do NOT Eat NyQuil Chicken!

people are cooking chicken in Nyquil listen to this new warning from the FDA and they are urging people not to cook chicken with NyQuil there's a tick tock Trend right now where people are cooking their chicken and cold or flu medicine like NyQuil the FDA is telling you do not do this right the FDA is out with this new warning against chicken cooked in Nyquil oh this no no we're totally fine this is DayQuil safe um absorb those juices [Music] hello Internet welcome to food Theory the smart show that takes on dumb news and ironic that an independent YouTuber has to be the one with some semblance of journalistic Standards but here we are friends welcome to the state of media in 2022. if you thought the pink sauce was as dumb and dangerous as Tick-Tock food content got well you're in for a rude awakening friendos lately people have been posting videos of a unique chicken recipe where they soak it boil it and bake it in cold medicine most commonly NyQuil by far the most viral of these was this now deleted video posted by user IG Rob flow my wife got sick last night so I'm cooking up some NyQuil chicken but of course his spawned others cue the onslaught of enraged and Confused media coverage the FDA has a big warning not sure who needs to hear this but don't cook chicken in Nyquil now let me be clear right off the bat using medicine as a marinade for your food is a terrible idea I think that kind of go without saying but just to be sure we're thorough here here's why it's such a dangerous idea first off the recommended dosage for NyQuil is 30 milliliters every 6 hours and half that dose for kids under 12. a standard bottle of the stuff is more than 11 times the recommended dosage so if you're dumping it all into a pan and frying it up there's a near guaranteed overdose waiting to happen also the idea of just eating half the chicken to get half the dose of Nyquil that you put in isn't full proof whenever you marinate or saute a chicken like this the spread isn't going to be uniform you might have noticed this when eating most food products are heterogeneous meaning they're not completely the same throughout and that's especially true of something like a piece of chicken where the lean meat the fat and the skin not only have different flavors as you eat on but different properties that affect how they absorb ingredients there's also the fact that what seems like a small amount of Nyquil might actually result in a much higher concentrated dose after you boil it just like letting a sauce simmer on the stove will thicken it up nyquil's active ingredients will become a much larger Porsche of the overall stew if you simmer or boil it meaning a little bit is gonna be packing a bigger punch and all of this is without even mentioning the steam according to the FDA quote inhaling the medications Vapors while cooking could cause high levels of the drug to enter your body sometimes this theme really makes you sleepy so yeah not only should you not be eating this which I suspect all of us already understood but you shouldn't even be cooking it for the memes and not just because it's a waste of delicious chicken memeing on it is inherently risky but here's the twist to the story friends and yeah normally I save the twist to the end of the script but today this whole episode is the twist you see NyQuil chicken isn't the real story here it's not the most dangerous part of this whole thing the most irresponsible thing to come out of the entire stupid Trend which isn't even a trend but we're gonna talk about that are the news stories themselves their selective reporting their fear-mongering and their overall coverage have taken something that was a non-issue and suddenly exploded it into a major major threat you see this is how the news media has been covering the whole NyQuil chicken story a new social media challenge is encouraging young people to cook their poultry in Nyquil I can't believe we're talking about that it is strange that we're talking about it but it tells you something about the world we live in now some people might actually believe it so please do not cook your food in Nyquil the news bills it as a challenge that people are actively engaging in and they repeatedly show Silent clips of the videos in questions except none of that is actually true let's look at each of those step by step well at first glance the NyQuil chicken videos might look like your typical Tick Tock recipe actually listening to the narration of the original video makes it clear that this is anything but serious usually I use about you know four thirds of the bottle if it's your first time doing this you can get away with using about a fifth let it sit there and Sizzle for about you know five to thirty minutes so it should be obvious for everyone that this is a joke right four thirds of a bottle 5 to 30 minutes it's a parody it should be obvious to everyone that this is meant to be a joke and if that didn't give it away the final line of the video certainly does boom knock will chicken bone Apple teeth oh yeah and that's a hair straightener that he's using instead of kitchen tongs all of it should make it clear that this is a hundred percent parody for the laws not intended for human consumption and yet the news media cuts out all the audio the context is left on The Cutting Room floor and all that's left is what seems to be a worryingly serious Trend but here's the kicker IG Rob flows obviously satirical Tick-Tock video was uploaded on September 4th of 2020. more than two years ago back then the video didn't take off it only went viral in January of this year because of a reaction video by YouTuber Action Jackson sharing the video to explain why this is a bad idea and why you would be an idiot to do anything like this it's not good for you please don't do this children at home please this man is a Hall of Fame psychopath you better be ready to give your attention to the nearest hospital if we look at the Google Trends graph for NyQuil chicken we see that the biggest Spike comes not after the satirical Tick Tock video but in January of 2022 in the weeks after Action Jackson dunked on this whole year old Tick-Tock Trend in other words the actual Trend here The Fad that's getting attention and clicks and Views isn't cooking NyQuil chicken it's the mocking of Nyquil chicken and talking about how stupid of an idea this is and this is how the trend has always been NyQuil chicken is not a new thing on the internet well sure the chicken has recently gotten renewed attention thanks to a tick tock video the idea actually has its origin date and back to April 2017. where an anonymous poster made what they called Sleepytime chicken referring to the fact that one of the active ingredients in Nyquil is doxylamine which causes drowsiness cue of course a threat of responses expressing shock horror and amusement any idea that provokes that kind of reaction is gonna spread and sure enough it made its way to Twitter several weeks later when Twitter user Tristan reposted several of the images from that original thread with the caption if she makes you NyQuil chicken do not let her go provoking yet another wave of disgust and mockery and memeing but here's the thing in every instance the original thread the Twitter feed this new video everyone instinctively knows that this is a stupid idea in fact based on our research there has never been an intent to actually eat this thing real or otherwise as a result none of the posts that I just talked about or any of the ones that I've been able to find using related keywords refer to this as a food challenge the trend here is haha funny chicken meme good not am I man enough to eat this and survive classifying it as an eating challenge has largely seemed to be an invention by the media in short this is just the tide pod story all over again a mountain of media coverage over a mole hill of something that was a meme that everyone largely recognized as a joke in all of my extensive research on the subject I've been able to find mountains of coverage interviewing numerous doctors about the hypothetical dangers of eating NyQuil chicken but no actual reports of people who were hurt or hospitalized or who got sick as a result of trying the stuff because all the signs indicate that people weren't trying the stuff they were creating satirical videos and they were mocking the satirical videos it was a meme it was an excuse to make fun of a hypothetical person who would be dumb enough to actually try something like this it wasn't an actual Public Health Menace the only thing that the media coverage did was Elevate the visibility of this bad idea to audiences that might not be in on a joke they also branded it as a real eating challenge something much more dangerous than what it initially was looking at Google Trends search data for both the web and YouTube NyQuil chicken was a non-existent idea in the public Consciousness until a week ago when the Press got a hold of this nothing Burger of a story and suddenly it was the headline on Nightly News broadcasts across the country so why then would the FDA make an announcement telling people not to do this if it's not a big thing I'm not the only one asking that question as an article from the New York Post on September 20th put it quote it's unclear why the FDA only now issued the warning about the challenge since videos have been circulating online for months you want to know know the truth that the news isn't telling you the FDA actually didn't make an announcement for the purposes of telling people about the dangers of Nyquil chicken here's what actually happened in September of 2022 the FDA posted a consumer update titled a recipe for danger social media challenges involving medicines now it's true that this FDA update does make a brief mention of the chicken using it as an example of a fad video that demonstrates an unsafe Behavior but this medicinally marinated meat is not the meat nor the potatoes of this FDA update it actually devotes much much more attention to the much much more serious topic of a different Tick-Tock Trend this one actually branded as a challenge that urged people to take large doses of allergy medicines like Benadryl this trend actually did put multiple teenagers in the hospital with one case ultimately proving fatal that was The Wider Trend that the FDA update was about looking at the FDA video it's obvious what their real message was here it was a reminder to parents to be aware of what their kids are consuming online to keep medicines away from children and to talk with their children making sure that they're not misusing over-the-counter medication that seems like an important message after all there are Tick Tock challenges that have left teenagers hospitalized or Worse there are some trends that are branded as challenges and unlike the NyQuil chicken meme are actually driving impressionable youngsters to engage in unsafe behaviors but does the media coverage that's been popping up cover any of this stuff from the FDA update no in the vast vast majority of news stories that I looked across broadcast media the focus was entirely on haha can't you believe that people are dumb enough to try to make NyQuil chicken wacky that the FDA had to tell him not to do that maybe if someone had actually bothered to read the FDA update they claim to be reporting on they'd realize what the real story was here more serious challenges that you should be talking about and more serious steps that kids and parents should be taking to stopping them but no of course not instead of sharing real Public Safety information about real public safety issues the overwhelming majority 30 of media Outlets instead chose to take the low road to use it as an excuse to dunk on how dumb social media is nope in this case you're the dumb one's traditional news you missed the forest for the trees you sacrificed real reporting all because funny chicken video thumbnails better so here let me do the work that they can't or won't do use medicines as prescribed kids while NyQuil chicken might be a funny meme don't do it because the fumes are gonna be potentially dangerous and more importantly The Wider lesson here if you ever see anything involving medicine being used in inappropriate ways online do not replicate what you see and then report the video immediately whether it's on YouTube on Tick Tock wherever because if you don't shut it down people are gonna get hurt and worse the news media might get a hold of it and make it into a much bigger problem than it ever was in the first place but hey that's not a theory it's a fact a fact that the news should have mentioned during the initial coverage of this story also I'm not gonna end this video with the Bon Appetit for very obvious reasons I would hope by the way if you want to see our takedown of another mess made by the media check out this video we did over on our sister Channel film Theory all about the tide pod craze from several years back head of nostalgia no one expected odd zarya probably didn't hear the full story about what went down with that one and for another Tick-Tock Fiasco that left a few people sick to their stomachs check out this video we did about the infamous pink sauce stay critical and I'll see you all next week

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 6,354,961

Keywords: nyquil chicken, nyquil chicken challenge, pink sauce, the pink sauce, what is nyquil chicken, what is the pink sauce, nyquil chicken recipe, fda nyquil chicken, cooking nyquil chicken, chicken nyquil challenge, nyquil chicken fda warning, cook chicken in nyquil, food theory, food theorists, matpat, food theory pink sauce, chicken recipe, challenge, nyquil chicken original, nyquil chicken reaction, nyquil chicken original video, nyquil chicken meme

Id: xyviGKwPntA

Length: 12min 13sec (733 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 02 2022