In response to a trend on social media that has re-emerged from a few months ago, U.S. health officials are warning people of the dangers of cooking raw chicken with NyQuil and other cold medicines. (AP Photo)ASSOCIATED PRESS

U.S. health officials are warning people of the dangers of cooking raw chicken with NyQuil and other cold medicines.

The warning comes in response to a trend on social media from January 2022 that has re-emerged.

The original video for the “Sleepy Chicken” challenge that originated in 2020 from what looks to be a satire account from the artist Rob Flo, according to his website.

Flo’s recipe for “Sleepy Chicken” involves pouring four-thirds of a bottle of NyQuil into a frying pan with chicken breasts and to boil the mixture for five-to-30 minutes.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned people thinking about attempting the challenge that boiling the medications used in multi-symptom cold medicines can change the concentration and properties of the medicines. This can sometimes cause people to ingest the medicine at dangerous levels.

“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,” the agency stated.

Some social media companies have been doing their part to ban the trends from spreading.

TikTok, for example, has deleted search results for “NyQuil chicken.” The platform replaced the search results with a warning message saying, “Some online challenges can be dangerous, disturbing or even fabricated.”

Even with TikTok’s efforts to keep the trend from spreading, searches for “sleepy chicken” or a misspelled version of chicken still redirect users to the challenge.

“Content that promotes dangerous behavior has no place on TikTok,” a company spokesperson told Bloomberg News in an email. “This is not trending on our platform, but we will remove content if found and strongly discourage anyone from engaging in behavior that may be harmful to themselves or others.”

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