Cooking with panadol

27 May 2015. Kampala, Uganda. The National Drug Authority has warned restaurants to refrain from using paracetamol, commonly known as Panadol, as a meat tenderiser because of the health effects on the consumers.Mr Frederick Sekyana, the authority’s head of public relations, told the Daily Monitor of Uganda that they have been receiving complaints since last year about food vendors and restaurants that use paracetamol to tenderise legumes like beans.

“The common complaint is that some unscrupulous people are using paracetamol to soften meat, molokony and legumes such as beans to cook in order to save charcoal. We are glad that the public is now vigilant and we ask them to report these cases to us,” Mr Sekyana said in a telephone interview yesterday.

In a notice NDA also warned that while consumers of food tenderised with paracetamol may not experience immediate discomfort, the possibility of long-term side effects cannot be ruled out such as liver and kidney damage.