Drug abuse: Danger of using paracetamol to cook meat

There has been an increasing concerns in connection to the abuse of prescription drugs around the world. A more subtle but terrifying trend which began in the 2000's is the use of paracetamol for cooking meat, mostly seen among food vendors.

According to our findings, the reason these food vendors use paracetamol in cooking meat is to tenderize the meat to avoid the long hours of boiling in order to meet the increasing demands of their customers.

Hard meat tends to take so long on the fire to soften but adding the paracetamol to it softens it quickly reducing the amount of time to cook it naturally but bear it in mind that it has some serious health complications.

Studies have shown that, when the drug is used for cooking, it breaks down into other forms which may not possess its original properties as a pain killer and thus could lead to high acidity.

Also, when this process occurs, the drug is hydrolysed into what we call 4-aminophenol, which is very toxic to the kidney.

Excessive consumption of analgesics over many years is a well recognised cause of some kidney diseases. Which particular analgesics cause this is questionable, but the most reported cases involve consumption of mixtures containing aspirin and phenacetin. Phenacetin has been withdrawn in many countries and the incidence of this disease is now low in the UK and USA.

Extremely large doses of aspirin or paracetamol can cause acute renal failure (usually when taken as a suicide attempt). Paracetamol poisoning usually causes liver failure which may be accompanied by acute renal failure. Very occasionally renal failure occurs alone.

It is therefore advise that the use of paracetamol for tenderizing meat should be discontinued for health safety. You can tenderize your meat by bartering or compression before cook. Stay safe!