The Pink Sauce Debacle: A Cautionary Tale of Misinformation and Malicious Rumor-Mongering
A recent incident involving Chef Pii's Pink Sauce has sparked a heated debate online, with many people claiming that the sauce is hazardous to one's health. The allegations range from botulism to personal accounts of people getting sick from consuming the sauce. However, after conducting thorough research and fact-checking, it becomes clear that the claims are largely exaggerated and unfounded.
One of the primary sources cited in support of the allegations is a video titled "Pink Sauce is Killing People!" on TikTok. The video features a series of alarming titles, including "Tik-Tok's Pink Sauce Hospitalizes 13 Year Old" and "Pink Sauce Nearly Hospitalized Me." However, upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that none of these claims are based on personal accounts or stories of people eating the sauce and getting sick. Instead, they appear to be clickbait titles designed to grab viewers' attention and generate views.
A search for the user Mama Wolf, who allegedly posted a review of Pink Sauce stating that her 13-year-old daughter had gotten sick from eating it, reveals that the account no longer exists. This suggests that the post may have been fabricated or deleted altogether. Furthermore, another individual faked their own death by claiming that they died after consuming Pink Sauce and then later revealed themselves to be alive. While this incident may have been a shocking and disturbing revelation for some, it is clear that it was also an attempt at humor rather than a genuine report of harm.
Despite the lack of credible evidence supporting the claims, the online community continued to perpetuate the rumors, with many people expressing outrage and concern on social media. Chef Pii, the creator of Pink Sauce, was subjected to intense scrutiny and criticism, with some individuals calling for her business to be boycotted or shut down entirely.
However, not all accounts of the incident are entirely unfounded. It appears that Chef Pii did act unprofessionally towards one customer, Ali, who had reviewed the product online. When Ali decided to send the sauce to a food safety testing lab, she discovered that it had already been opened and contaminated. This incident suggests that there may have been some issues with the production or handling of Pink Sauce, but it is unclear whether these problems were severe enough to pose a health risk.
In any case, the controversy surrounding Pink Sauce highlights the dangers of misinformation and malicious rumor-mongering on social media. The rapid spread of false claims can have serious consequences, both for individuals and businesses. Chef Pii has faced an unprecedented amount of backlash and criticism, but it is heartening to see her rise above the negativity and continue to pursue her passion for creating delicious sauces.
Ultimately, the Pink Sauce debacle serves as a cautionary tale about the importance of verifying information before sharing it online. By taking the time to fact-check and verify claims, we can help prevent the spread of misinformation and protect ourselves and others from harm.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enWelcome to How To Cook That I'm Ann Reardonand this is an episode of debunking wherewe have a look at viral videos from acrossthe internet and see what is true and whatis false. Now so many of you sent me linksto the Pink Sauce videos and the Pink Sourcecontroversy and asked me to take a look atit ... so here we go. Chef Pii is definitelya very hated character on the internet I amquite sure before the video has even beenviewed people will be currently typing negativecomments about her and about her sauce, ifyou have never heard of Chef Pii she madea ranch type dressing that is pink in color.She shared videos of it on her Instagram backin mid-2021 saying it was organic and it hadno food coloring and back then she calledit Pink Ranch instead of Pink Sauce. It didn'tget a whole lot of views and nothing reallyhappened but then mid this year she sharedsome videos of it to Tik Tok and it went viral... you know Tik Tok been blowing up we gotlike six million views in less than a week!So naturally people were curious, what ismaking this sauce so pink if you're not usingfood coloring? What does it taste like? Soshe decided to sell the sauce for twenty dollarsa bottle and it seems like after that everythingrapidly went wrong, so let's have a look atall the claims about this sauce and see whichones are true and which ones are false. Sofirstly there were claims about shipping problems.The first batch appears to have been shippedout in thin plastic packaging and becauseof that some of the bottles arrived damagedor even burst. Look at this! For that ChefPii apologized and offered a refund or a newbottle and subsequent batches were sent outin cardboard boxes instead so yes that wasa true claim there was issues with the packagingearly on and they seem to have been fixedfairly quickly but it was a true claim sowe'll put a tick there as to yes for the packagingissues. β
Moving on to the next claim ... sofirst of all 444 servings but the servingsize is one tablespoon that's around 28 cups,that label is not correct which means is anythingelse on the label actually correct? Thereis nothing in the label about Refrigerationnor is there an expiration date on the label.Vinegar is also spelled incorrectly. All rightso there was a few things there let's pullup the label and take a look, they're rightthe number of serves in this packaging isdefinitely wrong as for the expired date it'snot here but you can see a sticker with anexpiry date on the lids of some of the bottlesin the review videos so that's fine as longas it's got an expiry date on it somewhere.If we look back at the nutrition label thereare other problems here too like there iszero grams of every type of fat but that somehowadds up to one gram of total fat and it saysthere's three grams of total carbohydratebut there's 11 grams of sugars that 11 gramsshould be part of this total so it can't beless than 11. It can't be three. And if welook at the fat ... fat has nine caloriesper gram there's one gram of fat so that wouldequal nine calories and for the carbs let'sgo with the 11 grams not the three, thereare four calories per gram of carbs so thatwould be 44 calories. There's no protein sozero calories there and that adds up to 53calories per serve not 90 calories. So yesthat is a fair criticism of the sauce thelabeling was completely inaccurate and notright and this was Chef Pii's response: Myapologies I'm only human I'm not perfect.It's about 30 servings per container. We fixedthe issue you guys will not be receiving pinksauce bottles with the bad label. Apologizingis a great start but I can see with the newlabel which is flashing around there it stillsays 90 calories I can't read all the detailsbut I can tell the nutritional informationis still totally incorrect, so if you've madean error on the label maybe check everythingwith a fine tooth comb before reprinting.Okay on to the next claim: look at the saucelook at it yeah it's pink it's pink sauce,now look at it again why is it Pinker whydoes the color keep changing? If you ain'tgot the recipe straight if your formula ain'tformulated properly react you ain't readyfor Market. Chef Pii's initial response tothis was: The color didn't change just thelighting. Now while I agree lighting can havea dramatic effect on what the color lookslike and so can what settings you put thecamera on as you can see here you can geta bright pink all the way through to a palepink from the same photo depending what yoursettings are but it does change the look ofthe whole photo not just the sauce and ChefPii later said that she had made changes tothe recipe, a lot of people said they wantedthe bright pink sauce not a pale pink sauceso we'll take that one as a valid thing. Thenext claim or rather a question that peopleare asking is is Chef Pii even a chef? WellI'll let her answer that one for herself:so I asked my friend would he hire me to bea private chef and the next day he caughtme he was like yo you got a jacket and thenI was like hell no but I could go get onelike the store right across the street frommy house so like uniform. The real truth Ididn't go to culinary school. I am a privatechef which means that I do more elaborateintimate dining situations you know um, Iam a mixologist I am a certified bartender.My first uh private dining client like hisfriends that uh I went to go cook for himand his girlfriend I literally still cookfor them till this day. All right. Unfortunatelythere is no accrediting board that looks atwhether someone is a chef or whether they'renot. If you want to be a doctor or a nurseor anything like that there's a board thataccredits your qualifications and says yesyou can work in that field but that doesn'thappen with chefs so if her boss wanted tolet her buy a chef's jacket and call herselfa chef with no training and no prior experienceyou can actually do that, which will be thefrustration of every Chef π©π»βπ³listening who actually has a qualificationand years of experience but there you go that'show it is. So does that affect pink sauce?Well possibly yes because had she done trainingshe may have had a bit more knowledge on foodlabeling and food laws she may not have, itdepends on the course as to how deeply itgoes into that or if it even goes into thatat all. Now then next claim is more to dowith the actual recipe is the recipe itselffake? In order for mayonnaise to get thatreally creamy thick texture and that opaquewhite color there needs to be an emulsifier.I'm really good with dressings so I was thinkingthere has to be mayo or at the very leastmustard in it and then I came across thisvideo, which you see something that looksan awful lot like mayo and if you look atthe ingredients list there is nothing thatlooks like this listed here even if this isnot mayo at the very least she is using somethingthat's not here to give it that particularcolor and consistency. One thing was certainthis was not the sauce that Chef Pii is using.The color is purple not the Kirby pink thatwe were hoping for. Dragon fruit while itprovides color is a watery fruit and leftus with a runny broth that this sauce alwaysappears as a creamy sauce, it's opaque andit has a similar consistency to honey mustardranch or mayonnaise and yet the ingredientslist on the package contains nothing thatwould create a sauce that looks like this.Chef Pii uses mayonnaise as the base colorto get that Pepto-Bismol pink. I mixed ourbuddy Hidden Valley Ranch hashtag not sponand the dragon fruit together. So none ofthem managed to figure out a recipe that usedjust the ingredients on the label to comeup with a nice thick pink sauce, so they cameup with the conclusion that she must havejust been using mayo and mixing in some ofthe dragon fruit powder to give it that pinkcolor. Normally I can look at a recipe andtell you whether it's real or fake straightoff without even trying but this one usessomething that I have never tried to use ina dressing before which is dragon fruit, soI'm going to have to do some experiments.The main ingredients in ranch and mayo areoil and water but they don't mix togethervery well. To make an emulsion of the twoyou would normally blend the water and thenslowly drizzle in the oil slowly being thekey you can't just dump the oil and waterinto the blender and turn it on or it's notgoing to create an emulsion. This is an emulsionof just oil and water and see how it now lookswhite and thicker and creamier than waterdoes but this is not a stable emulsion overthe next hour or so it will settle back outinto the layers of oil and water. Now to solvethat problem you can use an emulsifier andthat helps keep the Emulsion stable it keepsall those little droplets separate so theoil doesn't just come back together. I'vegot three emulsions here this one is justthe water and oil with nothing else addedto it and you can see it's already startingto separate back out. This one has a quarterof a teaspoon of egg yolk in it, egg yolkcontains lecithin which is an emulsifier whichis why a lot of mayonnaises and sauces haveeggs in them in order to keep it all together.Egg is not listed as an ingredient on hersauce though so that is not what she usedto this next one I added a quarter of a teaspoonof soy lecithin which is an option if youdon't want to use eggs and you'll see thison ingredients lists as emulsifier E322. Againthat's not on her ingredient list so not whatshe used. To this one I've added a quarterof a teaspoon of mustard which is a possibilityin the pink sauce because she has spices listedand doesn't say what they are and finallyin this one you can probably guess what'sin it before I mix the oil with the waterI added a quarter of a teaspoon of dragonfruit powder to the water. Just one hour laterI could see that the mustard and the dragonfruit were starting to separate already soI decided to make up a mixture using the freshdragon fruit and the oil and make an emulsionthat way and see what happens with that one.While we wait to find out let's do a treasurehunt can you find Nutella, a sieve and testtubes?If you like hunting for things today's sponsorJune's Journey is a game set in the 1920swhere you have to hunt for hidden objectsand clues in order to solve a murder mystery.Some things are harder to find than others,if you can't find something in a scene makesure you turn up your screen brightness becausethat makes it much easier to see what's inthe shadows and also you can zoom in on thescreen and then it lets you know if the thingyou're looking for is in that section of thescreen or not. With the coins you earn inthe game you get to decorate your island howeveryou like. Wouldn't it be great if you couldplant manicured gardens and rearrange themthis easily in real life. I'll put a linkin the description to where you can downloadJune's Journey and you can play it on iOSAndroid or Facebook games and once you'vedone the tutorial on the game if you comeback here and click on the link in the descriptionagain. They will send you this 16.95 decorationfor free for you to put on your island. Okayback to our emulsion, three hours later andthe fresh dragon fruit and oil has formeda very stable emulsion it hasn't separatedat all. The freeze dried has some separationpossibly it needs more dragon fruit powderand the mustard is not great with that smallamount of mustard you're going to need morethan that. The soy lecithin is very stableeven with that tiny amount which is why it'sso popular and the egg yolk is pretty goodbut it probably needs more egg yolk than Iput in it and of course the straight oil andwater has separated completely. So now letme run that test again with two teaspoonsof freeze-dried dragon fruit I only used aquarter of a teaspoon last time ... look atthat wow so it seems like there is somethingin the dragon fruit probably the pectin thatis acting as an emulsifier. Even four hourslater it is still stable and so is the onethat used the fresh dragon fruit. So thatmeans that she doesn't need to list an emulsifieron her ingredients list because the dragonfruit is the emulsifier so to everyone whosaid that her sauce was impossible it's actuallyentirely possible just with the ingredientsthat she had listed. Of course I've only madeit using dragon fruit oil and water so that'sgoing to taste pretty bland and not very nice.If you want it to taste like a ranch you'regoing to have to add in the rest of the ingredientslike some powdered garlic and maybe a bitof mustard definitely vinegar some honey somelemon juice I think she had some chili inthere, how your sauce tastes is going to varycompletely depending on how much and whatyou add here as far as the flavorings. I'llput the proportions that I used on the HowToCookThat.netwebsite once you've added your dragon fruitin there you need to slowly drizzle in theoil with the blender running so that you cancreate that emulsion and then you get a reallythick opaque pink sauce no mayonnaise no emulsifiersjust the ingredients she had listed on thebottle let's give it to Dave to taste. Wellthey weren't kidding about it being pink saucewere they? That is a a very 80s hot pink.Here we go give it a good dunk a good soaking...HmmIs it sort of a bit Ranch like a ranch saucetiny tiny little bit spicy a little bit sortof westerny type of sauce. It's okay. Let'slook at the next claim I suspect the mayomay be acting as more than just an ingredient.You notice the yellow capped squeeze bottlesthat the pink sauce comes packaged in. Whywon't your pink sauce have I don't know apink lid? Yellow is nowhere to be found inher brand unless your main ingredient is mayonnaiseand you happen to have a ton of these yellowcapped bottles just sitting around. Repurposethe old mayo bottles wipe off the label boomyou've got yourself a brand new product. Ifyou're rushing a new product to market youreally don't have time to wait for custompink lids to be made you'd just have to buybottles that were already available like thesebottles with yellow lids and the seals inthem. If you have a look at the review videosyou can see that the bottles are sealed whenpeople are getting them ... so it's sealedokay there's no air coming in or out of it.They are definitely not reused mayonnaisebottles that claim is completely false. Thenext claim is a lot more serious and it hasto do with the safety of the product: andthis is definitely a serious announcement... do not eat the Pink Sauce.Do not eat that sauce ... read up on botulismright now and Chef Pii, Carly suspend allorders immediately. While everyone in digitalcommentary land is out here telling you allthe reasons that consuming the product isdangerous which let me be clear it absolutelyis you should not buy this stuff and definitelydon't consume it ... Now a lot of the fearsaround pink sauce came from an interview withBen Chapman from North Carolina Universitywhere he said: in food like this when yousee low acid foods like raw garlic or dragonfruit being put in a high oil content we'veseen similar products lead to botulism inthe past without any acidification of thoselow acid foods. The real key to his statementthere are the words without any acidification.Now yes there have been cases of people gettingbotulism when they've chopped up garlic andput it in oil to use it as garlic oil butthat is not what she is making you can buygarlic aioli at the shops and you can havegarlic flavors in all different sources andthere isn't the risk of getting botulism sowhy is that? Well it's all to do with theacid level if you have a pH of 4.6 or lessthe clostridium botulin spores cannot growand make the toxin that causes botulism soif it is acidic then you are fine. Now anacid level of 4.6 if we have a look at a pHscale 4.6 is not that high ... a tomato wouldcome in at 4 and coffee would come in at 5so sort of halfway between a tomato and acoffee if you can think of it that way. Nowof course water and the oil that she's usingstarts out as about a 7 at the neutral rightin the middle there but then if you look onthe ingredients list we're adding vinegarwhich is of course an acid and lemon juicewhich is an acid and on the ingredients you'vealso got citric acid listed which is acid.So depending how much of that you add youare shifting it down the scale so that youhave a lower pH and making it more acidic.Bow I don't know what proportions of ingredientsChef Pii used but if she used a standard mayonnaisetype recipe or a ranch type recipe it's goingto be sitting down at a pH of around your3.5 to 4 so very much in the safe zone andno issue for botulism. Now I don't know Idon't have her sauce so I can't test it butwhat I do know is a lot of people ate thissauce and a lot of people reviewed it andthere were no cases of botulism reported sothis is not something that you can say shewas going to kill people with her sauce, Noin fact if her sauce had those acids in itthere was no risk of that that wasn't an issue.But if you're familiar with pink sauce you'llknow that there was quite a lot of reportsof people getting sick from having Pink Sauce... I mean just look at these video titlesthe pink source is killing people tik tok'spink sauce hospitalizes 13 year old and aTik-Tok pink sauce nearly hospitalized me.But when you watch those videos none of themare about personal accounts or stories ofa person eating pink sauce and getting sickthey are actually just clickbait trying toget views based on pink sauce and are talkingabout pink sauce while gaming or doing otherthings but the person who made the video hasnot got sick. There was only one post I couldfind on Reddit by Mama Wolf saying that her13 year old daughter had got sick and wasin the hospital. If we search for the userMama Wolf she no longer exists which makesit very likely that this was a fake post andnot a real post. There was also another guywho faked his own death with the cause ofdeath being eating pink sauce and then laterowned up to the fact he was still alive...I'm not dead, so first and foremost I wantto say sorry if I scared you all, I mean thatwas my intent but like not like this. Secondoff, I want to say to Chef Pii, sorry if thisscared you at all or impacted your businessin any way that was never my intent. I havesearched and searched and apart from thosetwo false accounts I cannot find any accountsof people getting sick from eating pink sauce.Now lots of people videoed themselves eatingit and reviewed it and none of them came backand said that it made them sick, so to theclaim of the source making people sick oreven killing people that is a false accusation.Now on to the next claim which is that ChefPii herself has acted unprofessionally towardsone of her customers specifically Ali whodid a review on the product and with all ofthe storm around saying people got sick fromit decided to send it for testing. Am I goingto die is it safe? I would be so interestedto sending this to a food safety um testinglab and I think it's like $300 I'm willingto send this to be tested. Now I actuallythink that was a fair thing to do becauseof all of the rumours that were circulatingaround at the time but unfortunately she didn'tsend the bottle unopened she'd already openedit she'd already stuck a finger in it andyou can't send something for testing at thatstage she's never actually released the resultsfrom it so I'm assuming there was nothinguntoward in it however she did go on a talkshow with Chef Pii.You could have contacted me and I could haveturned around, I'm not a hateful person...Why would I contact someone who's fabricatingsomething on the Internet, you're not special,you're not special. I think I'm gonna haveto agree with that claim that was not a goodway to speak to a customer and Ali if youare watching you are special π I actuallythink you handled yourself with amazing maturityand calmness in what can only be describedas a very biased interview so well done toyou I think you came out looking great atthe end of that. So back to Pink Sauce werethere mistakes made on Chef Pii's behalf?Yes there definitely were. But was that thenescalated exaggerated and taken to the levelof false claims and possibly defamation, yesI think there was too and unfortunately oncethat internet churning wheel of hate startsit's very hard to slow it down and same withmisinformation so I actually don't know howshe is still smiling and coping after sixmonths of pile-on, I think that she's actuallyan amazingly strong person to be able to copewith that. She's actually just signed a dealwith a sauce company to make her Pink Sauceand because of the Mountain of negativityand misinformation that she has been subjectedto I actually hope that it goes really wellfor her. With thanks to my patrons for yourunbelievably amazing support and encouragement,I really appreciate it and thanks also toJune's Journey for sponsoring the video thedownload link is below. Make it a great weekby being kind to others and I'll see you onFriday π\n"