The latest trend on TikTok could end up giving participants ‘a lot of diarrhea,’ according to one gastroenterologist. The new TikTok trend prompts people to attempt and chew big globs of frozen honey, which can have both hilarious and gross results. Not only is the honey incredibly hard to consume, it’s also incredibly hard for the body to process that much sugar in general, it can also apparently be incredibly stressful to the digestive system. In fact, as gastroenterologist Niket Sonpal of Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in NYC tells it, what we’re seeing with this TikTok ‘Honey Challenge’ is a lot of diarrhea in the making!
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“I actually have seen the videos, a few times,” Sonpal said to WKRN. “And the minute I saw it, my first thought was, ‘That is a lot of sugar, that is a lot of honey, and that is a lot of diarrhea.’”
The honey challenge has seen TikTok users taking honey or products containing a lot of high-fructose corn syrup (like Coca-Cola or Kool-Aid) and freezing them inside of their cans or in empty plastic bottles. Because of the syrupy nature of the products, true freezing is impossible; instead what you get is a gelatinous blob of semi-solid sugar to eat – much like a piece of taffy. This not-so-new “discovery” is now thrilling the TikTok generation, but there is the dark side of it to consider.
@daveyrz Bottled jelly secret formula #experiment
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Candy makers have an incentive to ensure that their products are sold with a proper balance of sugar and other ingredients that will satisfy a consumer, without making him/her sick in a single serving of the product. If someone opens and eats multiple packages of said product… that’s on them. However, kids playing around on TikTok know no such restraint and don’t have any official consumer agencies or standards to answer to. They can make as much sugary concoction as can fit in a container – and few probably have the self-control to properly meter out eating that kind of sugary treat. That’s all to say: a lot of these young sweets lovers are going to end up with the Hershey squirts.
As always, social media continues to be an incredibly mixed bag when it comes to creating these kinds of trends. For every Ice Bucket Challenge that actually does something good for the world, there’s a Tide Pod Challenge that seems to reflect the deepest depths of our collective foolishness. One can only guess which side of the fence the Honey Challenge will fall on long overdue call to awareness about the level of sugar in our food? Or the main source of inspiration for the possibly forthcoming Diarrhea Challenge? We shall see…
