Subscribe
Cassius Life Featured Video
CLOSE
Black plastic milk crate on a concrete sidewalk

Source: Simon McGill / Getty

This past Monday, the Food and Drug Administration approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, making it the first of the three major pharmaceutical companies to receive official government blessing for its product. But there is a whole other crisis endangering people around the world, and it would appear the FDA disapproves of anything related to it: the trending milk crate challenge.

Late-night television host Conan O’Brien took to Twitter on Monday as well to poke some fun at the challenge. “Waiting for FDA approval before I take the Milk Crate Challenge,” he wrote.

But the agency replied two hours later, and its response to the comedian was a tad dry. “Although we regulate milk, we can’t recommend you try that,” the FDA tweeted back. “Perhaps enjoy a nice glass of 2% and return all those crates to the grocery store?”

Some people have been successful in attempting the challenge while rolling blunts or wearing heels, but many more have been faceplanting pretty hard. And although the bloopers may provide tons of laughs for onlookers, medical professionals do not see any humor in the stunt and are discouraging the act altogether.

Dr. Shawn Anthony, an orthopedic surgeon at NYC’s Mount Sinai Hospital, spoke to the Washington Post about the danger of playing around at such heights. “It’s perhaps even worse than falling from a ladder,” he said, adding that “[i]t’s very difficult to brace yourself from the falls I’ve seen in these videos. They’re putting their joints at an even higher risk for injury.”

Social media platform TikTok has taken things a step further and removed videos of the challenge from its service. It also has deactivated the hashtag #MilkCrateChallenge returns an error message if a search is attempted.

“TikTok prohibits content that promotes or glorifies dangerous acts, and we remove videos and redirect searches to our Community Guidelines to discourage such content,” the company said in a statement. “We encourage everyone to exercise caution in their behavior whether online or off.”

Henry Schuitema, chief of emergency medicine at Jefferson Health in New Jersey, said he dealt with a patient who took a tumble attempting the feat and fractured several ribs in the process. He also straightforwardly told the Washington Post, “So many of these injuries we’re seeing are preventable just by being intelligent.”

Milk may do a body good, but milk crates? Not so much.