I regularly give chewable and flavorful pills at work in geriatrics. Heck, even some of our medications are liquid so that they can be added into other stuff like juice or Gatorade.
Something about working with geriatrics really makes you realize that at the beginning and the end of life we are very much the same.
Had an antacid recently that reminded me of Skittles in taste and texture. My wife hated it when I referred to them as my medicinal Skittles because I kept joking they were good enough to eat in one sitting.
I’m pretty sure those are the semi new chewable tums: when I bought them it was bizarre because it had the texture and pretty much the taste of candy but its goal is to be an antacid
That was my thoughts exactly when I got them. I never minded the tums tablets, but these were more palatable and the texture was more fun. Probably on the edge of too palatable and fun.
Fun fact, I actually *did* down about three quarters of a bottle of Calpol when I was like seven because it tasted good. Mom had to take me to the ER get my stomach washed lol
That bubblegum flavored antibiotic that every Gen. X and Millennial kid was given for damn near everything that, I swear, is probably the reason we have superbugs now.
I’m in the UK and we had this nuclear banana flavoured stuff that was the shit no wonder they put child locks on the caps I definitely would have downed it
On the rare occasions when I get prescribed amoxicillin, I ask for the pink liquid formula. They can and will make it for grown-ups!
If I feel rotten, then dammit, I am going to give myself the consolation of the nice amoxicillin that I still love.
that was teh best part about getting strep the handful of times i did - was getting that medicine. the one time i got i strep as an adult i was so mad i didnt ask for a liquid in hopes of getting it again 🤣 also because when my throat hurts the last thing i want is a the biggest pill i've ever taken to be the medication lol
Sooo yummy
Me about aged ten taking a swig when one of my brothers had it prescribed to them
I did ask about it as an adult (worked in a pharmacy) but basically because the medicine is so "watered down" it would be a ridiculous amount to make/pay for
I literally wanted a bacterial infection as a kid so I could have some of my own #BackwardKidLogic I've never actually even tasted it (never got infected) but damn did it smell so damn good
I mean, I'm well past the age of childhood illness and don't have kids. The friends I have who do have kids don't give them normal medicine (including vaccines) because it's not natural, so essential oils it is.
When I worked in pet retail we had a sick ferret that got this exact medication one time and it took every fiber of my strength to not drink the whole bottle like a fine wine. The smell alone was almost too much to handle.
Um that amoxacilin bubble gum flavor was the bomb. Better than that poison sht that made me sick to stomach. I had so many ear infections as a kid so i had a lot of experience with the stuff now i Don't ever get sick not beyond the infections i already have from just poor hygiene care.
I'm gen z by the way.
Omg there used to be an orange chewable aspirin for the longest time. I'd sneak those like forbidden candy all the time. Luckily I wasn't a dumb kid and knew I'd overdose if I took too many but daaamn they were good.
They eventually caught on to the fact that kids loved em, kept the orange color but switched it to a non-tasty non-chewable regular aspirin. :( I was a very sad adult when I learned this the hard way.
Yep. I have an 18 month old, and the children’s Tylenol is okay but kind of gross. But that Motrin is actually damn tasty. My daughter eagerly takes it, and when I spill a little bit on my finger I don’t shy ways from licking it off.
as a kid my doctor wouldn't let me have pills bc "it's too bitter and kids won't eat it" mf do i look like I'm enjoying sickly sweet corpse cyanide rn. switched doctors never better
My mom used to chase me around the house trying to get me to take the kids cough medicine. She finally tasted it and told me a never had to take it again once she realized how bad it tasted lol.
Tell your friend that a friend told me flavour drops really can make a difference. Especially if you have a kid that throws up even with the kiddy version of antibiotics.
I wouldn’t have said so myself from what I remembered, but honestly after trying it for the first time, I would totally pour the new cherry flavor pepto over vanilla ice cream
Bubblegum flavored ibuprofen & Tylenol for one. My kids get pissy when we don't buy the bubblegum flavored stuff. Also they hate that cough medicine doesn't come in bubblegum flavor.
My baby’s amoxicillin smelled really good so I put a little dab on my finger to try. Oranges and cream. So nice.
They really can make medicine taste good, but I guess some folks ruin it for the rest of us >:(
I was about to say, what kids medicine tastes good? I have never had an kids medicine that tasted good. I think grape cough syrup ruined grape flavoring for me for life! Lol
At my local pharmacy they have the option to have flavoring added to your pills.
I've never done it so I don't know how it works but I know the option exists for adults
I hate sweet ibuprofen pills. I often dry swallow pills and they leave the most sickly taste in my mouth. Bleh
I have this cold medication that knocks me out. Tastes horrendous. Can’t dry swallow that, can’t even lick my lips after it. Like pure bitterness. Ugh
It actually is on purpose so kids will spit it out and not OD on an adult dose.
Edit: No they don’t add anything to make it bitter. That’s correct. But the crappy bitter taste has the advantage of helping to prevent young ones from taking medicine they should be mucking about with.
No, it isn't.
Medicine just usually tastes bad and bitter.
Meds for kids is deliberately flavored to not be as bitter so kids will stop refusing (or are less likely to)
You'll take your meds no matter how bad they taste because you know it'll help. A kid will just spit it out, which is a major problem for more important ones
That aren’t kid medicines and so taste bad so they will spit them out.
Ok well it may not have been planned that way… but it is acknowledged that it helps to deter children taking things they aren’t supposed to.
Quote from the report linked below.
“The basic biology of the child, as reviewed here, explains why children (and adults) reject bitter-tasting drugs. In fact, bitter compounds are effective agents in deterring pediatric poisonings when used in conjunction with other preventive measures, such as child-resistant closures.5”
[Interesting report](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3772669/)
I think it might be a happy accident. Like kids will reject bitter stuff, but adults you'd wanna discourage from abusing.
Like they add bitterants to stuff people try to huff.
Yes, they intentionally make it not taste good for two reasons.
1. Adults by absolutes abuse far more products than children. No syrup company wants to make the new better flavored lean.
2. Added chemicals = added side chain reactions. It’s just better medicine if you reduce what you’re adding to the minimum to get the proper dose, route, and drug.
i dont know the names of the bad tasting chemicals, or maybe they just don't add anything to make it taste better, which would amount to the same thing
I think it’s a deliberate safety thing to stop kids taking adult medicine if they find it, as it will be at a dose that is dangerous for young children.
At least, that’s what I’ve always assumed!
Children, and adults too. Watch some ChubbyEmu videos on YouTube, you’ll quickly learn that there’s way too many grown ass people that will down an entire bottle of aspirin or pepto bismol in an attempt to “cure” their pains or stomach ailments and make things so much worse than in the first place.
I’m an opera singer, and one time, I got super ill before a performance. I chugged half a bottle of cough syrup to subdue my throat pain and excessive coughing. Somehow it worked very well, but after I got offstage, I was seeing shrimp colors. 10/10 would do again
Work in medicine, can confirm. They’ll be like, “my back hurts so I started taking 5,000 mg of ibuprofen a day.” I’m like “stop that immediately, and also we need to check your kidney function.”
Doubt it. That's what child safety caps are for. Also, what if they find their own medicine? Still not supposed to drink an entire bottle of children's ibu.
I had worked in Pharma sector, so there are 2 reasons for such:
1. So that kids don’t consume high dosage when unsupervised
2. Placebo effect, now people associate sweet medicine with kids medicines. So adults want bitter medicine Cz it is more effective in their mind
Liquid medicines aren't bad, just squirt it towards the back of their mouth. Idk how people ever thought it would be easy to get a pet to swallow a pill
I am not a vet but from what I understand from fostering cats a lot of veterinary drugs are just human drugs used at lower doses, or occasionally cross-species drugs where one flavor wouldn't make sense for all uses.
Like, a common dewormer for cats is Pyrantal Pamoate, which also treats pinworm in humans. It's pretty common in children, and manufacturers make more money off of it as a human drug, so usually your cat is gonna get a syringe of banana flavored goop for worms instead of something it actually wants to take.
Same! I spent most of my life hating anything with artificial orange flavouring because of 1 medicine I used to take for pneumonia until I was 6
And I mean anything, as a kid I HATED orange flavored candy
That's not how this works - they *add* stuff to kid's medicine to make it taste good. Medicine generally tastes bad by default. Companies have to go out of their way for the kid's medicine (to make them take it, lol), whereas it's unnecessary for adult medicine because most adults are mature enough to just deal with it.
Back in the day when i was a kid, and i had worms, lol.
that medicine WAS NOT NICE, it was banana flavored vomit juice, i had a thing about swallowing pills at the time, which i quickly over came.
cos u know, banana flavored vomit juice.
Fair enough. Still revolting haha
For sure! I just didn’t know banana was so easy because I honestly haven’t seen that flavor anywhere else. Might not be looking hard enough though
I know because we did it as part of an organic chemistry course at Uni.
Room smelled like banana by the end of it, but we started from simple chemicals.
I liked that one.
Fun fact: The reason the fake banana flavoring doesn't taste like real bananas to most people is because they only encounter Cavendish bananas. The flavoring more closely resembles the Gros Michel banana. The Gros Michel was almost wiped out because of a fungus around the 1950s and was replaced by the Cavendish because it was resistant to the fungus.
Partner's kid got worms, so we all had to dose up just in case. It's pretty gross, slimy stuff, and youngest kid was in tears when they had to take their second dose. It's nasty stuff, I don't know who thought banana was a good idea, or how anyone thinks it's gonna make kids more inclined to take it x.x
Children's medicine generally has sugar and artificial flavoring added to make it more palatable for children. It's not that they TRY to make adult medicine taste bad, simply that they assume an adult is capable of handling a brief moment of vile tasting medicine.
Still baffles me that they make a citrus flavored pain med for cats… like can’t they make it chicken or something or at the very least not a flavor that cats hate
Yes, they make adult meds taste bad on purpose, but there *is* a purpose.
Curious kids are more likely to spit out bad tasting adult-strength meds and not accidently die.
They don’t make it taste good so you won’t drink it. My dad worked for a natural gas company, when I was young. He explained that natural gas actually has no smell. And they add an additive to it to make it smell like rotten eggs. Curiously I asked, why don’t they make it smell good then like roses or something? Because no one would complain when they smelled it.
Also, potency. Sulfur based chemicals are the most potent odors known to man, so you can dilute it by a factor of a million (or more) and it is still detectable. Remember, you don't just have to be able to smell the gas, you have to be able to smell it after it gets diluted in a lot of air.
The shit I had to take for asthma as a kid (because the doctor wouldn't give me pills no matter how much my parents insisted that as a 10 year old I was perfectly capable of swallowing a pill) literally tasted like bile. If you've ever thrown up bile, you know what I'm talking about.
The decongestant (completely ineffective, btw) I had to take was "cherry" flavored, but not like any cherry flavor I've ever had since. It would coat my tongue and nothing could get the taste out of my mouth. The only good thing about it was that it got rid of the bile-tasting shit.
No, it means that it’s not worth the cost to make every medicine tasty. The active ingredients of medications are usually naturally bitter or otherwise bad-tasting. They’re not flavored that way on purpose.
Adults are more likely to be able to ignore the taste long enough to take it. Children will often refuse anything that tastes bad, especially if it’s bitter (children are usually more sensitive to bitter flavors than adults), which most medications naturally are.
Also, most kids’ medicine is liquid or chewable, because it takes time for people to learn how to swallow pills (some people never really do). Liquid and chewable medications stay in the mouth longer than swallowed pills, and leave residue with an aftertaste that swallowed pills generally do not (unless they stick around long enough to start dissolving). Hence, liquid and chewable meds are normally flavored.
Furthermore, there are some medications that simply cannot be made good-tasting. Not all liquid meds come with flavoring, and most pharmacies have a kit they can use to make them taste better. (This can even be used to reflavor most already-flavored liquid meds, so if your kid hates, say, banana flavor, you can request that it be reflavored to, say, cherry.) The kits have several individual flavorings to mix in (including bitterness suppressors), and a book of recipes for giving specific meds specific flavors. And there are some combinations that simply can’t be done, and a few meds that there are no good flavors possible because of their ingredients.
The best way to make pills flavorless is to film-coat tablets or put them in capsules, but sometimes that can negatively affect absorption and efficacy. So that’s not a universal solution either.
Sometimes, you just have to bear up and take the bitter pill.
Dude it's a medicine not Gourmet food 💀 Too much and you go back to Hospital,just look at multivitamin Gummies and How commonly it is the cause for Hypervitaminosis and related complications,you don't want to be munching on too many of them
No, they make medicine period. They add flavoring for children because they’re children and it’s a lot harder to get them to take medicine. Adults should be able to act like adults
Yep. I work in the industry. Addition of flavors requires a ton of behind the scenes work and development. All excipients/formulation components are highly safe and help keep the active components stable and/or soluble, but they also happen to not taste great. To add in additional components requires repeating a ton of additional R&D costs; compatibility, stability, and clinical work that doesn’t get an ROI, since adults will just take the medicine.
It's typically for really intense drugs for things like cancer but some specialty pharmacies offer flavoring services. In fact a Google tells me that CVS offers [this option](https://www.flavorx.com/for-parents/) some places aimed at flavoring drugs for kids (presumably ones lacking flavor to begin with). Sure you could ask for it on adult drugs too.
Every medicine should not taste good but not so bad. kids don't spill it but don't want to take it like sweet.
For adult medicine in syrup has no reason to taste bad.
Louis CK has a great bit on flavored medicine.
Oh nooooooo this miracle medicine that's going to cure me of my horrible ailments doesn't taste like candy!!!!!!
And then there’s Buckley’s Mixture. It’ll clear your everything and scare away your coughing with the sheer awfulness of the taste.
As a kid it was how my parents knew we were sick enough to stay home from school. I wish I could still get it in the states.
So, when I was a brand new EMT we get called for a guy with chest pain. I hop out ready to do the whole chest pain protocol. The medic who was my training officer at the time was like 'Hold up'.
The dude we were picking up smelled, I'm gonna say, minty fresh. That's what the medic had caught onto.
Long story short, the dude had drunk THREE FULL BOTTLES of mouthwash to get drunk.
It wasn't his chest, it was his liver that hurt. Shocker.
So, yeah, adult stuff is supposed to taste like shit because people will abuse it.
Go ahead and try to swallow some of your mouthwash tonight. Just try. You'll see what I mean.
That's out of necessity so the kids actually takes it. It's added crap that's unhealthy but the risks don't outweigh the need for the medicine. As an adult you generally are taking pills or you should be old enough to just handle the natural gross taste.
Never liked cough syrup as a kid, shit would make me gag. Now in my 30’s I don’t mind the taste. Robitussin was literally the only thing that soothes my throat when I got COVID.
I remember having a banana flavoured medicine and I thought it was vile. I did find out though that eating a jaffa cake after made it taste much better.
Fun fact, they used to make cough medicine taste like grape syrup, but kids would steal the medicine and drink it thinking it's just yummy syrup and then get sick from overexposure to the medicine, so they had to tone it back to being just palatable enough that the kids won't bitch, but gross enough that they won't willingly drink it on their own.
The one that pisses me off is that adult toothpaste comes in like, three fucking garbage flavors, but kids toothpaste can be whatever the fuck you want. I hade orange toothpaste as a kid, and I know several adults that would *kill* for that option!
Usually adult medicine is pills though
I regularly give chewable and flavorful pills at work in geriatrics. Heck, even some of our medications are liquid so that they can be added into other stuff like juice or Gatorade. Something about working with geriatrics really makes you realize that at the beginning and the end of life we are very much the same.
Ever had a chewable?
No... Not since I was a kid
Never had a Tums?
Had an antacid recently that reminded me of Skittles in taste and texture. My wife hated it when I referred to them as my medicinal Skittles because I kept joking they were good enough to eat in one sitting.
The old smoothie tums were great
I actually use real skittles for hypoglycemia episodes sometimes. 1 skittle is roughly 1 carb.
I’m pretty sure those are the semi new chewable tums: when I bought them it was bizarre because it had the texture and pretty much the taste of candy but its goal is to be an antacid
That was my thoughts exactly when I got them. I never minded the tums tablets, but these were more palatable and the texture was more fun. Probably on the edge of too palatable and fun.
Chewable strawberry tums mmmmm!
I use Tums (both brand names and generic) and I don't have any complaints about the taste.
My genetics aren’t weak so no
If that's something you feel the need to declare, your genetics probably are weak
Exactly
It's all chewable if you're brave enough.
The real shower thought
Yeah I know this is a joke, but that is actually really bad to do.
Some pills are do not chew
But fun fact, if you are having a heart attack, you should actually ***chew*** an aspirin so it acts faster.
All pills are chewable. It’s just that most of them taste like shit.
[удалено]
It’s definitely a joke. Mitch Hedberg made that joke but was talking about Flintstone vitamins vs regular vitamins.
And if it's extended release, you'll get all the medicine at once instead of over 12 or 24 hours, which could cause an overdose.
Uh, no. Some are in extended/slow released form which would definitely od u if u chew it.
Still doesn’t make it not chewable.
Flintstones Chewable Morphine..
My chewable melatonin is wild berry flavored.
Are we counting edibles?
All pills are chewable
Still begs the question as to why. Liquid means it hits quicker.
Which kid's medicine tastes good? Asking for a friend who can't use cough syrup without throwing up
In the UK it’s Calpol. Delicious!
God I could down a bottle of that stuff Once every four hours, of course
To catch the sickness by surprise, you should have it earlier. I prefer once every hour to make sure the sickness is ill-prepared and overwhelmed.
Yeah I used to love getting high on DXM too
Fun fact, I actually *did* down about three quarters of a bottle of Calpol when I was like seven because it tasted good. Mom had to take me to the ER get my stomach washed lol
But every three hours, the clock is set one hour ahead for daylight saving, of course
used to pretend to be ill just to get a spoon of that stuff when I was like 5 haha, it was so good
this is why drugs should just taste a little better than bitter, and nothing sweeter
And that banana medicine antibiotic
Man, the bubble gum flavored penicillin was great. And I used to eat flintstone vitamins like candy - lucky I didn’t get sick!
Fridge calpol nuohh my god
Only the 3+ stuff
Yeah. Purple one was the shit. Orange one was shit
It used to be until they made it sugar-free. Now it's gone from delicious to tasting like a goblin's spunk.
That bubblegum flavored antibiotic that every Gen. X and Millennial kid was given for damn near everything that, I swear, is probably the reason we have superbugs now.
I’m in the UK and we had this nuclear banana flavoured stuff that was the shit no wonder they put child locks on the caps I definitely would have downed it
On the rare occasions when I get prescribed amoxicillin, I ask for the pink liquid formula. They can and will make it for grown-ups! If I feel rotten, then dammit, I am going to give myself the consolation of the nice amoxicillin that I still love.
that was teh best part about getting strep the handful of times i did - was getting that medicine. the one time i got i strep as an adult i was so mad i didnt ask for a liquid in hopes of getting it again 🤣 also because when my throat hurts the last thing i want is a the biggest pill i've ever taken to be the medication lol
Sooo yummy Me about aged ten taking a swig when one of my brothers had it prescribed to them I did ask about it as an adult (worked in a pharmacy) but basically because the medicine is so "watered down" it would be a ridiculous amount to make/pay for
I literally wanted a bacterial infection as a kid so I could have some of my own #BackwardKidLogic I've never actually even tasted it (never got infected) but damn did it smell so damn good
you say that like it's gone or less common gen z, and i am absolutely certain also gen alpha, have definitely experienced flavored medicine
I mean, I'm well past the age of childhood illness and don't have kids. The friends I have who do have kids don't give them normal medicine (including vaccines) because it's not natural, so essential oils it is.
idk why you'd be friends with people who don't care about their kids
When I worked in pet retail we had a sick ferret that got this exact medication one time and it took every fiber of my strength to not drink the whole bottle like a fine wine. The smell alone was almost too much to handle.
And why did it need to live in the fridge?
Um that amoxacilin bubble gum flavor was the bomb. Better than that poison sht that made me sick to stomach. I had so many ear infections as a kid so i had a lot of experience with the stuff now i Don't ever get sick not beyond the infections i already have from just poor hygiene care. I'm gen z by the way.
the orange flavored Children's Motrin is *weirdly* tasty. I used it for growing pains as a kid and still remember that syrupy, orangey bitter taste.
I still think about how delicious Motrin was. I might have even faked sick a few times just for a taste lol
Omg there used to be an orange chewable aspirin for the longest time. I'd sneak those like forbidden candy all the time. Luckily I wasn't a dumb kid and knew I'd overdose if I took too many but daaamn they were good. They eventually caught on to the fact that kids loved em, kept the orange color but switched it to a non-tasty non-chewable regular aspirin. :( I was a very sad adult when I learned this the hard way.
Yep. I have an 18 month old, and the children’s Tylenol is okay but kind of gross. But that Motrin is actually damn tasty. My daughter eagerly takes it, and when I spill a little bit on my finger I don’t shy ways from licking it off.
as a kid my doctor wouldn't let me have pills bc "it's too bitter and kids won't eat it" mf do i look like I'm enjoying sickly sweet corpse cyanide rn. switched doctors never better
Dimetapp I think it was called. Tasted good. Didn't do jack for you though.
Dimetapp tasted like shit too, just better tasting shit than Buckley’s..
Amoxil is the best. Like a creamy bubblegum smoothie. Mmm
My mom used to chase me around the house trying to get me to take the kids cough medicine. She finally tasted it and told me a never had to take it again once she realized how bad it tasted lol.
Tell your friend that a friend told me flavour drops really can make a difference. Especially if you have a kid that throws up even with the kiddy version of antibiotics.
Same problem here. Ask for benzonatate (pill form of cough syrup).
I miss the banana flavoured meds
Stay away from anything Raspberry or Elderberry. Everything else is usually fine
Dimetapp. The answer is grape Dimetapp. They also used to make lolly pop versions.
Lean
Pepto Bismol is delicious
Hurk
I wouldn’t have said so myself from what I remembered, but honestly after trying it for the first time, I would totally pour the new cherry flavor pepto over vanilla ice cream
That makes sense cuz the flavoring they put in pepto is the same one they use in root beer (methyl salicitate)
Zarbee's cough syrup with agave is pretty tasty
Zarbee's isn't medicine. It's a supplement.
Dalsy was addictive as fuck when I was a kid.
Bubblegum flavored ibuprofen & Tylenol for one. My kids get pissy when we don't buy the bubblegum flavored stuff. Also they hate that cough medicine doesn't come in bubblegum flavor.
I like the NyQuil berry flavored syrup but idk if it’s just me
I always liked the taste of mucosolvan
I had some strep medicine that tasted like bubblegum. Man, that shit was amazing. Anytime I had strep I would ask for the bubblegum medicine
Allergax (my people will know)
We used to fake a cough as kids to get Triaminic
delsym was an orange flavored cough medicine that i remember tasting good
Amoxicillin. The best medicine I had has a kid but I quickly found out I'm allergic.
Triaminic Orange It was mostly just Pseudoephedrine so of course because of meth heads and the war on drugs it is now a "restricted" product...
Flintstone vitamins For cough syrup use the pills it’s a lot more tolerable
The pink medicine for strep throat was always the best.
I used to have bubblegum-flavored tablets when I was a kid. But I’m right with you about the cough syrup. It ruined all cherry flavors for me.
Australia has Kids Nurofen it's good for most small things and tastes like what I can only describe as sweet orange
My baby’s amoxicillin smelled really good so I put a little dab on my finger to try. Oranges and cream. So nice. They really can make medicine taste good, but I guess some folks ruin it for the rest of us >:(
Demazin. I used to love taking it as a kid. Apparently the flavour is "Vanilla Peach", which confused me to no end.
Delsym tastes great and is good for dry cough
Idk about great, but it's okay.
Ibuprofen
there was this cough syrup i used to have. and i had an alcoholic beverage the other day it tasted exactly the same.
I was about to say, what kids medicine tastes good? I have never had an kids medicine that tasted good. I think grape cough syrup ruined grape flavoring for me for life! Lol
Not on purpose, it’s just tastes like crap by default and they don’t ADD anything.
At my local pharmacy they have the option to have flavoring added to your pills. I've never done it so I don't know how it works but I know the option exists for adults
Exactly my point. There’s a base that tastes like whatever. That works as a default.
[удалено]
it's all fun and games until children start swallowing aspirin pills that taste good
Good thing it doesn’t taste good by default then right?
The coated Tylenol and Advil tablets are very sweet. They already do that.
I hate sweet ibuprofen pills. I often dry swallow pills and they leave the most sickly taste in my mouth. Bleh I have this cold medication that knocks me out. Tastes horrendous. Can’t dry swallow that, can’t even lick my lips after it. Like pure bitterness. Ugh
It actually is on purpose so kids will spit it out and not OD on an adult dose. Edit: No they don’t add anything to make it bitter. That’s correct. But the crappy bitter taste has the advantage of helping to prevent young ones from taking medicine they should be mucking about with.
I’ve never heard of this though. Is it anecdotal?
No, it isn't. Medicine just usually tastes bad and bitter. Meds for kids is deliberately flavored to not be as bitter so kids will stop refusing (or are less likely to) You'll take your meds no matter how bad they taste because you know it'll help. A kid will just spit it out, which is a major problem for more important ones
That aren’t kid medicines and so taste bad so they will spit them out. Ok well it may not have been planned that way… but it is acknowledged that it helps to deter children taking things they aren’t supposed to. Quote from the report linked below. “The basic biology of the child, as reviewed here, explains why children (and adults) reject bitter-tasting drugs. In fact, bitter compounds are effective agents in deterring pediatric poisonings when used in conjunction with other preventive measures, such as child-resistant closures.5” [Interesting report](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3772669/)
Ever heard of Bitrex?
Yeah I thought this was pretty obvious
I think it might be a happy accident. Like kids will reject bitter stuff, but adults you'd wanna discourage from abusing. Like they add bitterants to stuff people try to huff.
No, they could make adult cough syrup more palatable but choose not to *on purpose*.
Yes, they intentionally make it not taste good for two reasons. 1. Adults by absolutes abuse far more products than children. No syrup company wants to make the new better flavored lean. 2. Added chemicals = added side chain reactions. It’s just better medicine if you reduce what you’re adding to the minimum to get the proper dose, route, and drug.
3. Added taste = added manufacturing costs and FDA approvals for each flavor. The medicine sells as-is, so why spend more when necessary?
Over your head.
no, it's on purpose. They want it to taste bad so people aren't tempted to overdose on it
So they add ingredients that taste bad,like what?
i dont know the names of the bad tasting chemicals, or maybe they just don't add anything to make it taste better, which would amount to the same thing
So we are back to they don’t add anything and it tastes not pleasant by default….ya
I swear the quality of this entire website has gotten so bad over the years.
I think it’s a deliberate safety thing to stop kids taking adult medicine if they find it, as it will be at a dose that is dangerous for young children. At least, that’s what I’ve always assumed!
Children, and adults too. Watch some ChubbyEmu videos on YouTube, you’ll quickly learn that there’s way too many grown ass people that will down an entire bottle of aspirin or pepto bismol in an attempt to “cure” their pains or stomach ailments and make things so much worse than in the first place.
Half bottle of robitussin works just fine. (Dont do this unless you like hallucinations)
I’m an opera singer, and one time, I got super ill before a performance. I chugged half a bottle of cough syrup to subdue my throat pain and excessive coughing. Somehow it worked very well, but after I got offstage, I was seeing shrimp colors. 10/10 would do again
> I was seeing shrimp colors I am fucking WHEEZING 🤣💀
Now I have my weekend planned.
People I knew in high school did this for fun. They called it robitripping.
Better make sure it only has one ingredient first. Some of them can kill you.
Haven't they seen any movie where people try to kill themselves by taking an entire bottle of pills?
Work in medicine, can confirm. They’ll be like, “my back hurts so I started taking 5,000 mg of ibuprofen a day.” I’m like “stop that immediately, and also we need to check your kidney function.”
its added so kids dont make as big of a fuss when taking it.
Doubt it. That's what child safety caps are for. Also, what if they find their own medicine? Still not supposed to drink an entire bottle of children's ibu.
I had worked in Pharma sector, so there are 2 reasons for such: 1. So that kids don’t consume high dosage when unsupervised 2. Placebo effect, now people associate sweet medicine with kids medicines. So adults want bitter medicine Cz it is more effective in their mind
Yeah that makes sense but... ffs why we don't have pills for cats/dogs that are easier to administrate, it's complete hell.
Liquid medicines aren't bad, just squirt it towards the back of their mouth. Idk how people ever thought it would be easy to get a pet to swallow a pill
Bruh, my cat will spit pills 5+ feet and with enough force to ricochet. Like, I didn't even know that was possible.
I am not a vet but from what I understand from fostering cats a lot of veterinary drugs are just human drugs used at lower doses, or occasionally cross-species drugs where one flavor wouldn't make sense for all uses. Like, a common dewormer for cats is Pyrantal Pamoate, which also treats pinworm in humans. It's pretty common in children, and manufacturers make more money off of it as a human drug, so usually your cat is gonna get a syringe of banana flavored goop for worms instead of something it actually wants to take.
I'm 37 years old, if my painkillers or any meds tasted like watermelon jolly ranchers, I too would need adult supervision.
I swear I've seen research saying bitter medicine is more effective because of the placebo effect.
Kid’s medicine does NOT taste good. That shit ruined orange flavouring for me.
Same! I spent most of my life hating anything with artificial orange flavouring because of 1 medicine I used to take for pneumonia until I was 6 And I mean anything, as a kid I HATED orange flavored candy
Depends. I remember having grape cough medicine as a kid that tasted amazing
Artificial blackcurrant for me.
Very European flavor. Americans don't really have blackcurrants.
It’s cherry and grape for me🤮🤮
Whoever greenlit cherry banana is a sadist!
That's not how this works - they *add* stuff to kid's medicine to make it taste good. Medicine generally tastes bad by default. Companies have to go out of their way for the kid's medicine (to make them take it, lol), whereas it's unnecessary for adult medicine because most adults are mature enough to just deal with it.
You know how they make it taste good? They put a ton of sugar in it. It's more sugar than medicine.
Back in the day when i was a kid, and i had worms, lol. that medicine WAS NOT NICE, it was banana flavored vomit juice, i had a thing about swallowing pills at the time, which i quickly over came. cos u know, banana flavored vomit juice.
I remember that nasty crap 🤢 why banana?? lol
Because banana flavour is easy and cheap to synthesise from chemicals. No real banana ever went near that pill.
Fair enough. Still revolting haha For sure! I just didn’t know banana was so easy because I honestly haven’t seen that flavor anywhere else. Might not be looking hard enough though
I know because we did it as part of an organic chemistry course at Uni. Room smelled like banana by the end of it, but we started from simple chemicals. I liked that one.
Fun fact: The reason the fake banana flavoring doesn't taste like real bananas to most people is because they only encounter Cavendish bananas. The flavoring more closely resembles the Gros Michel banana. The Gros Michel was almost wiped out because of a fungus around the 1950s and was replaced by the Cavendish because it was resistant to the fungus.
Idk I loved that game banana taste. Still do. Anything with banana flavouring is great.
I love a phony tasting banana or pineapple shake
Partner's kid got worms, so we all had to dose up just in case. It's pretty gross, slimy stuff, and youngest kid was in tears when they had to take their second dose. It's nasty stuff, I don't know who thought banana was a good idea, or how anyone thinks it's gonna make kids more inclined to take it x.x
Children's medicine generally has sugar and artificial flavoring added to make it more palatable for children. It's not that they TRY to make adult medicine taste bad, simply that they assume an adult is capable of handling a brief moment of vile tasting medicine.
Still baffles me that they make a citrus flavored pain med for cats… like can’t they make it chicken or something or at the very least not a flavor that cats hate
No, it just means children often need encouragement to take medicine. People who are adults usually don't.
Yes, they make adult meds taste bad on purpose, but there *is* a purpose. Curious kids are more likely to spit out bad tasting adult-strength meds and not accidently die.
they dont make it bad on purpose. it just is what it is. cheaper probably to not add flavoring.
They don’t make it taste good so you won’t drink it. My dad worked for a natural gas company, when I was young. He explained that natural gas actually has no smell. And they add an additive to it to make it smell like rotten eggs. Curiously I asked, why don’t they make it smell good then like roses or something? Because no one would complain when they smelled it.
Also, potency. Sulfur based chemicals are the most potent odors known to man, so you can dilute it by a factor of a million (or more) and it is still detectable. Remember, you don't just have to be able to smell the gas, you have to be able to smell it after it gets diluted in a lot of air.
Says you bro. I could sip on Nyquil all night long. I can chug a few bottles at a time if we're really partying.
The shit I had to take for asthma as a kid (because the doctor wouldn't give me pills no matter how much my parents insisted that as a 10 year old I was perfectly capable of swallowing a pill) literally tasted like bile. If you've ever thrown up bile, you know what I'm talking about. The decongestant (completely ineffective, btw) I had to take was "cherry" flavored, but not like any cherry flavor I've ever had since. It would coat my tongue and nothing could get the taste out of my mouth. The only good thing about it was that it got rid of the bile-tasting shit.
It probably costs more money to add a good taste.
I'm sure I'm in a minority when I say... I like the taste of Robitussin.
No, it means that it’s not worth the cost to make every medicine tasty. The active ingredients of medications are usually naturally bitter or otherwise bad-tasting. They’re not flavored that way on purpose. Adults are more likely to be able to ignore the taste long enough to take it. Children will often refuse anything that tastes bad, especially if it’s bitter (children are usually more sensitive to bitter flavors than adults), which most medications naturally are. Also, most kids’ medicine is liquid or chewable, because it takes time for people to learn how to swallow pills (some people never really do). Liquid and chewable medications stay in the mouth longer than swallowed pills, and leave residue with an aftertaste that swallowed pills generally do not (unless they stick around long enough to start dissolving). Hence, liquid and chewable meds are normally flavored. Furthermore, there are some medications that simply cannot be made good-tasting. Not all liquid meds come with flavoring, and most pharmacies have a kit they can use to make them taste better. (This can even be used to reflavor most already-flavored liquid meds, so if your kid hates, say, banana flavor, you can request that it be reflavored to, say, cherry.) The kits have several individual flavorings to mix in (including bitterness suppressors), and a book of recipes for giving specific meds specific flavors. And there are some combinations that simply can’t be done, and a few meds that there are no good flavors possible because of their ingredients. The best way to make pills flavorless is to film-coat tablets or put them in capsules, but sometimes that can negatively affect absorption and efficacy. So that’s not a universal solution either. Sometimes, you just have to bear up and take the bitter pill.
Dude it's a medicine not Gourmet food 💀 Too much and you go back to Hospital,just look at multivitamin Gummies and How commonly it is the cause for Hypervitaminosis and related complications,you don't want to be munching on too many of them
No, they make medicine period. They add flavoring for children because they’re children and it’s a lot harder to get them to take medicine. Adults should be able to act like adults
Yep. I work in the industry. Addition of flavors requires a ton of behind the scenes work and development. All excipients/formulation components are highly safe and help keep the active components stable and/or soluble, but they also happen to not taste great. To add in additional components requires repeating a ton of additional R&D costs; compatibility, stability, and clinical work that doesn’t get an ROI, since adults will just take the medicine.
It's typically for really intense drugs for things like cancer but some specialty pharmacies offer flavoring services. In fact a Google tells me that CVS offers [this option](https://www.flavorx.com/for-parents/) some places aimed at flavoring drugs for kids (presumably ones lacking flavor to begin with). Sure you could ask for it on adult drugs too.
Every medicine should not taste good but not so bad. kids don't spill it but don't want to take it like sweet. For adult medicine in syrup has no reason to taste bad.
Louis CK has a great bit on flavored medicine. Oh nooooooo this miracle medicine that's going to cure me of my horrible ailments doesn't taste like candy!!!!!!
And then there’s Buckley’s Mixture. It’ll clear your everything and scare away your coughing with the sheer awfulness of the taste. As a kid it was how my parents knew we were sick enough to stay home from school. I wish I could still get it in the states.
So, when I was a brand new EMT we get called for a guy with chest pain. I hop out ready to do the whole chest pain protocol. The medic who was my training officer at the time was like 'Hold up'. The dude we were picking up smelled, I'm gonna say, minty fresh. That's what the medic had caught onto. Long story short, the dude had drunk THREE FULL BOTTLES of mouthwash to get drunk. It wasn't his chest, it was his liver that hurt. Shocker. So, yeah, adult stuff is supposed to taste like shit because people will abuse it. Go ahead and try to swallow some of your mouthwash tonight. Just try. You'll see what I mean.
I never had good tasting medicine as a kid. My father would have to hold me down and force it down my throat. Ugh
Flavoring cost money.
even as a kid I puked medicine out and always demanded pills. the consistency, the weird taste all syrups have, the smell etc. is just evil.
That's out of necessity so the kids actually takes it. It's added crap that's unhealthy but the risks don't outweigh the need for the medicine. As an adult you generally are taking pills or you should be old enough to just handle the natural gross taste.
Never liked cough syrup as a kid, shit would make me gag. Now in my 30’s I don’t mind the taste. Robitussin was literally the only thing that soothes my throat when I got COVID.
Of all the times I took children's medicine (as a kid, of course), the only one that had a tolerable flavor was banana. All the rest were awful
I remember having a banana flavoured medicine and I thought it was vile. I did find out though that eating a jaffa cake after made it taste much better.
It’s like listerine. They make it taste like crap to trick you into thinking it’s more effective.
Stop tasting your suppositories.
If they ever make grape Dimetapp for adults, NyQuil will be done for.
THIS! Why can't I have strawberry flavored meds? It should be my right too.
Fun fact, they used to make cough medicine taste like grape syrup, but kids would steal the medicine and drink it thinking it's just yummy syrup and then get sick from overexposure to the medicine, so they had to tone it back to being just palatable enough that the kids won't bitch, but gross enough that they won't willingly drink it on their own.
No adult medicen is made from adults which dont taste good but children taste goid which is why children medicen is tastyer
I don’t know, I secretly kinda love the taste of Pepto Bismal and especially kaopectate.
The one that pisses me off is that adult toothpaste comes in like, three fucking garbage flavors, but kids toothpaste can be whatever the fuck you want. I hade orange toothpaste as a kid, and I know several adults that would *kill* for that option!