There are two things that everyone knows for a fact: one, it is unhealthy to eat laundry detergent; two, the internet has an affinity for starting ridiculous trends or challenges. The cinnamon challenge, the salt and ice challenge, and just about any other “challenge” started on the internet that you can think of carry the possibility of serious medical consequences. However, these challenges still gain outrageous popularity on the internet as people upload videos of themselves performing the challenges for laughs and views. The newest challenge the internet has seen is no exception to these dangers and popularity.

The newest challenge to plague the internet is the Tide Pod challenge. In the Tide Pod challenge, a person simply takes a Tide Pod and eats it (though usually the person just takes a bite out of it and then spits it out because, well, it’s laundry detergent). However, eating the laundry detergent is not all there is to it, because in order to be a true internet challenge, a video must be taken and uploaded! This internet challenge has gained a lot of attention because it poses obviously concerning medical issues. Most people know that eating laundry detergent is not a good idea and that none of the ingredients in a Tide Pod are edible. Tide Pods are composed of polyvinyl alcohol, denatonium benzoate, fatty acid salts, alcoholethoxy sulfate, disodium distyrylbiphenyl disulfonate, mannanase, amylase, subtilisin, diethylenetriamine pentaacetate, and calcium formate. In short, none of these things are good to be consumed by the human body. Consuming a Tide Pod can lead to symptoms such as vomiting, severe abdominal pain, flatulence, and diarrhea. The intense vomiting that can occur due to eating a Tide Pod poses the risks of aspiration of the substances into the lungs, which leads to serious breathing problems. The bleach contained in a Tide Pod can also seriously damage the digestive tract.

The idea of eating Tide Pods simply started out as a joke on the internet. Beginning a few years ago, people have noted on the internet that “Tide Pods look good to eat,” comparing them to candies and other foods like Gushers, gummies filled with a liquid substance and a common childhood favorite. This observation was later turned into joke content on several internet platforms, particularly the Onion. The joke rose to popularity in late 2017 and the first few weeks of 2018 as an internet meme that refers to Tide Pods as the “forbidden fruit.” Since then, this meme has escalated into this very dangerous challenge of people attempting to eat the “forbidden fruit.”

While eating Tide Pods is definitely not a good idea, there is a scientific explanation behind why someone might have the underlying desire to eat one. Tide Pods possess many qualities that appeal to the human brain and our instincts as something that would be good to eat. The colorfulness of Tide Pods appeal to our senses and make us think of ripened fruit, excluding the bright blue which is instinctually a warning color for food, but because of today’s advertisement and production of vibrantly colored foods, many children and even adults are now trained to look at it as appealing. More important than the colors, the feeling of a Tide Pod makes our brains think “Eat this!”. Tide Pods are very soft, which mimics the feeling of something edible and the texture of many foods. The squishiness of a Tide Pod also tells your brain that there is less barrier to get through, unlike a rock which your brain very obviously knows it can’t bite through. All of these aspects might make your brain think “I should eat this” when you go to pop a Tide Pod in your washing machine, but then it corrects itself because your brain knows that it is laundry detergent and not food.

In response to this extremely weird trend of eating Tide Pods, many people have looked to the Tide company for a solution. In the past, the company has taken serious steps towards improving the packaging of these objectively candy-looking detergent pods to discourage consumption. The company created a harder covering and with a bitter taste for the pods so that if children accidentally tried to eat the pod they wouldn’t be able to puncture the covering or if they did, would spit it out due to the taste. More explicit warnings were also put on the packaging that warned parents to keep Tide Pods out of the reach of children to prevent accidental consumption. However, preventing children from accidentally eating their product is an entirely different situation than keeping teenagers and adults from intentionally eating it. Accidental consumption can be prevented, but the company can’t change the thought process of people making the active and conscious decision to eat a Tide Pod.

Overall, the Tide Pod challenge is just the newest way that people are hurting themselves for “fun”. The air suppression challenge, the eraser challenge, and the gallon challenge are just a few more ways that people have done this in the past, even before internet platforms like YouTube began to popularize them. People probably won’t stop taking these risks for the attention and thrill anytime soon, but please, just stop eating Tide Pods.