Brooklyn Pizzeria Parodies Laundry Pod Trend With New Pizza

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- The apparent obsession of teenagers recording themselves eating potentially dangerous things has motivated some restaurants to cash in on the fad with Tide Pod-inspired food.

The "Tide Pod Challenge," which has captured many adolescents chewing on the laundry detergent pouches until their mouths overflow with soap, has been so widely denounced that YouTube has begun to delete any videos tied to the stunt.

"YouTube's Community Guidelines prohibit content that's intended to encourage dangerous activities that have an inherent risk of physical harm," a Google spokesperson said, via CBS58.

Seeking to create a non-soapy solution to the Tide Pod-chewing fad, some restaurants and snack shops are advertising new creations which look like the tiny laundry cleaners. Brooklyn's Vinnie's Pizzeria is offering a safer alternative with their new "Pied Pods." The Pied Pods are cheese and pepperoni stuffed rolls, topped with blue and orange dyed cheese. Vinnie's said in a tweet that the Pies have the "bright, alluring colors that youths crave," but without the soap.

Hurts Donut in Missouri went viral on Facebook with a photo their latest frosted donut creation made to look like a Tide pod.

Consumer Reports warns that Tide Pods and other laundry pouches are potentially toxic because they often contain ethanol, hydrogen peroxide, and polymers which can burn the digestive system. Poison control centers around the U.S. logged 39 cases of intentional laundry pod "exposures" among teenagers in the first two weeks of 2018, more than the total number of Tide Pod challenge injuries in all of 2016.

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