By: Akanksha
In a country where superstitions are as diverse as they are deeply rooted, physicians have come to fear an unusual jinx associated with Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). Thanat Tantinam, a 35-year-old colorectal surgeon in Thailand, is familiar with several aspects of medical science, including the human digestive system and bowel cancer rates. However, he is also aware of one unwritten rule: never eat KFC at work.
Ever since he was a medical student, around a decade ago, the American fast-food franchise has been associated with an unusual superstition among Thai doctors. Many believe that consuming KFC during working hours can result in exceptionally busy shifts. Across several Thai hospitals, doctors and nurses have long feared that eating KFC while on duty could invite a sudden surge in patient admissions.
Dr. Thanat, in a New York Times article, noted that it’s a serious superstition in some hospitals. His colleagues might be mad if they bring KFC.
Superstitions are quite prevalent in medical culture. Many healthcare professionals hold informal beliefs about what may affect how busy they are with patients. This can include lucky days, particular actions, and even words.
To formally investigate the prevalence of the fried chicken superstition, Dr. Thanat and his team conducted a cross-sectional pilot survey involving 38 surgeons from 18 hospitals across Thailand. Overall, 20 respondents (52.6%) believed that food could influence their duty workload. Among these, 12 respondents (60.0%) specifically identified KFC.
Dr. Thanat recently put this theory to the test. Between July 2023 and June 2024, he and several colleagues from the General Surgery Department at Phatthalung Hospital in southern Thailand, where he worked at the time, conducted a randomized controlled trial involving 345 surgical shifts.
Five general surgeons holding a permanent appointment in the department consented to participate, contributing 345 duty shifts over 345 consecutive on-call days. Each duty shift was randomly allocated on the morning of that shift to one of three arms, comparing metrics, like case load, number of consultations, operations, operative time, or estimated blood loss in patients:
The KFC Group: The on-duty surgeon consumed a typical serving of KFC before or during the duty shift.
The Five Star Chicken Group: Another group got food from a local Thai brand named Five Star Chicken, serving as an active comparator to distinguish brand-specific effects from fried chicken in general.
The Control Group: One group had no dietary intervention, eating their usual meal or nothing at all.
Medical personnel who consulted or referred cases to the on-duty surgeon were masked to the arm assignment so referral decisions would not be influenced. After excluding 32 shifts where a surgical resident was present on duty, 313 shifts formed the primary analysis.
The study, published in the Annals of Surgery Open earlier this year, found that eating KFC does not, in fact, lead to more work. None of the primary outcomes differed significantly between the arms.
These findings align with prior experimental evidence against food and verbal superstitions in clinical medicine, for example, the Singapore “Tao of Bao” trial, which showed that eating steamed buns (baozi) had no effect on night-call workload, and studies testing the spoken “quiet” word superstition.
After concluding the study, all five surgeons reported a decrease of exactly one point in their food superstitions belief score on a 0 to 10 scale, shifting the median belief score from 6 down to 5. Yet belief strength was not abolished. The study left many questions unanswered: Where did the KFC curse come from? And how had it gripped some of the most educated scientific minds in the country, including Dr. Thanat himself?
Dr. Thanat said that he still believes it, maybe 80 percent out of 100. If someone brought him KFC at work, he would keep it until past his shift.
Also Read: I’m Educated and a Fan of Science. So Why Do I Follow Superstitions?
Few medical superstitions have been as universal and long-running as the KFC curse, a fact that has been a point of fascination at KFC itself.
Suhayl Limbada, who was until recently the chief marketing officer at KFC Thailand, said in the New York Times that they dug into the data and it was pretty clear. There was a noticeable trend at restaurants around hospitals: there was a dip in sales.
Two years ago, he parlayed the curse into a marketing campaign. Though riffing on cultural practices had gotten Mr. Limbada in trouble before, the fried chicken-scented incense sticks the company released for Lunar New Year were widely panned, this one was much more warmly received. Launched on Doctor’s day in November 2024, the campaign offered a kind of cleansing ritual. Chicken was sold in curse-dispelling packaging labeled with slogans like “This is not KFC” and "No WingZ Zabb inside,"in selected branches near the hospitals.
The campaign also reported commercial results. According to Hakuhodo, the campaign generated 81,972,514 organic engagements in three days. Transactions at a branch near a hospital increased by 200%, while overall brand sales increased by 26%.
Although the precise origin of the “KFC curse” remains unknown, the study notes that KFC was historically among the most accessible meals during overnight shifts, leading to frequent consumption while on call. Memorable occasions where eating KFC coincided with unusually busy shifts likely created an illusory correlation, reinforced through confirmation bias and passed down by word of mouth across generations of trainees and staff.
Mr. Limbada has his own ideas about how the curse came to be. KFC opened in Thailand in 1984 and has since become one of the most ubiquitous fast food franchises in the country and a trailblazer of late night delivery. It operated around 1,300 stores, far outnumbering McDonald’s, which has around 240. In even the smallest rural town, chances are there is at least a KFC. He thinks one of these rural locations might have been ground zero, delivering one late night to an understaffed local hospital where a hungry doctor, unaware that they were about to be hot with a sanity-shattering deluge of patients, was waiting.
The superstition has since racked up a catalog of very specific lore. It is widely understood, for example, that it only applies to departments that cannot easily leave the hospital for meals, like surgery or emergency rooms, said Titaporn Nasaarn, a 34-year-old ER doctor at Kamalasai Hospital in northeastern Thailand, in the New York Times report.
She recalled how her colleagues once successfully co-opted the superstition for good. It was during an unusually quiet evening in the surgical intensive care unit, and some of the nurses, who wanted to work, were worried they were going to lose their upcoming shifts.
She said that the attending anesthesiologist performed a ritual to summon cases by ordering KFC and pizza, and the beds filled up, but “normally, hardly anyone dares to order it.”
Ms. Theeraunch, the professor, sees the widespread belief in the jinx not as a posture of anti-science, but a way for Thailand’s medical workers to keep their spirits up. Hospitals are intensely unpredictable, and a shared rule like ‘don’t eat KFC on shift’ may give a small sense of control over something inherently unpredictable. They also build solidarity, she said.
Dr. Thant has come to a similar view. Underneath the supernatural dress of the KFC curse are more sobering earthbound realities, he said. It is telling that the curse has largely been confined to the country’s public hospitals, where doctors are overworked and underpaid compared with their private sector counterparts, who have long called for better working conditions.
Dr. Thanat said that doctor’s compensation at private hospitals scales with greater caseloads. If one works at a private hospital, one would want more patients to come, he added. He also thinks that the KFC curse is a projection of fear, and we need a scapegoat.
Reference:
1. National Library of Medicine. “The Influence of Food Superstition (Kentucky Fried Chicken, KFC) on the On-Duty Surgeon’s Workload: A Multiple-Armed Randomized Controlled Trial.” PubMed. PMID: 42775331. Accessed November 5, 2026.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42775331/
(Rh/APC/MSM)
