‘Do Not Cook Your Chicken in NyQuil’: CNN Medical Analyst Warns After FDA Response to Bizarre Online Trend

CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen shared on Monday some advice one hopes would never actually be necessary: “Do not cook your chicken in NyQuil.”

The seemingly obvious culinary tip was proffered in response to an actual warning released by the FDA — yes, this is a real thing on the FDA’s website right now, because we are in fact living in the dumbest and weirdest timeline — titled “A Recipe for Danger: Social Media Challenges Involving Medicines.”

“A recent social media video challenge encourages people to cook chicken in NyQuil (acetaminophen, dextromethorphan, and doxylamine) or another similar OTC cough and cold medication, presumably to eat,” the FDA statement says, calling the challenge “silly and unappetizing” but one that “could also be very unsafe,” and offering this explanation:

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.

CNN Newsroom anchor Ana Cabrera brought on Cohen to discuss the social media trend. “What should parents know?” asked Cabrera.

“Did you ever think you would say that phrase, Ana — cooking chicken in NyQuil?” Cohen said with a laugh.

“I don’t get it!” replied Cabrera.

“It’s apparently all the rage among some kids,” said Cohen, but is “a terrible idea.”

“When you cook a medicine, you are concentrating it,” she explained. “So if you cook chicken in NyQuil — and we have no idea how many people are doing it, but enough that the FDA is worried — when you cook NyQuil, you’re concentrating it.”

People trying this could end up hurting their lungs by inhaling the fumes, said Cohen, and if they eat the chicken would be getting a “concentrated version” of the over-the-counter medicine.

“You change the medicine by cooking it,” she emphasized. “It’s a terrible idea. I’m here to say, do not cook your chicken in NyQuil.”

It’s not entirely clear how widespread this online challenge truly was.  A quick search of social media for “Nyquil chicken” and “#nyquilchicken” did not find many posts, although it seems likely that platforms have blocked or removed content if the FDA is issuing warnings about it. Instagram had a handful of posts sharing screenshots of the below image, mostly with mocking or critical comments.

Screenshot via Instagram

Twitter similarly had only a smattering of posts and videos, some from several months ago. Searching on TikTok brings up zero results and a link to the platform’s warning message about how to assess “potentially harmful” online challenges.

Watch the video above, via CNN.