Can Chicken Soup Cure the Common Cold?
March 27, 2012
•Le Cordon Bleu
•Miami
• 0 Comments
Can Chicken Soup Cure the Common Cold?
Colleges in Florida teach everything from how to cook to rocket science and everything in between. Technology is used to teach those lessons and spread education around the world. Yet, even in this modern age of technology, we’ve all heard of various home remedies or folk medicine recipes that range from the slightly uncommon to the completely bizarre. Some take the form of adages: “Feed a cold, starve a fever.” Others may include teas made from or the direct ingestion of many different plants and herbs.
There are millions of folk remedies for what ails you, especially in Asian cultures where herbal medicine is often practiced right along side modern Western medicine. Examples include St. John’s wort for depression, jewelweed for rashes, sage tea for body odor, and jasmine tea for insomnia.
The question, of course, is whether or not any of them work. Thousands of years of Eastern medicine and several Western medical studies suggest that some of the remedies may actually work. But how is one supposed to know which ones, especially with bogus infomercials, Internet falsehoods, and cantankerous grandmothers around?
The best advice is to ignore most of those claims and to practice good old fashioned TLC.
Soup Is Good for You
It turns out that the chicken soup that your grandmother forced on you every time you got the sniffles may be one of the best things to consume for the common cold. In 2000, researchers at the University of Nebraska Medical Center made both culinary news and scientific news when their study found that chicken soup contains several ingredients that positively affect the body’s immune system.
They found that chicken soup has an anti-inflammatory affect that may help to soothe throats and ease the suffering associated with the common cold and flu viruses. Their studies didn’t show that the soup cures or decreases the lengths of infection, but neither do any of the over the counter remedies sold at your local pharmacy. Soup, especially if it’s hot and delicious, merely helps mitigate several symptoms that make having a cold so miserable.
Yeah? But How?
Specifically, chicken soup helped to stop the activity of neutrophils, white blood cells that attack bacteria and cellular debris caused by viral infections like colds. High amounts of neutrophils often stimulate the production of mucous, which may contribute to stuffy noses and coughs. According to the Mayo Clinic it also “temporarily speeds up the movement of mucus, possibly helping relieve congestion and limiting the amount of time viruses are in contact with the nose lining.”
Recipe for Easy Chicken Noodle Soup
It may be culinary news that chicken soups help sooth a cold, but you and your grandma already knew that, Right? This delicious and simple recipe for chicken soup is the ultimate in home remedies for treating the common cold.
Ingredients:
- 1 whole chicken (3-4lbs.)
- 4 carrots, sliced
- 4 stalks of celery, sliced
- 1 large onion, diced
- 4 ounce of egg noodles
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
- 2 teaspoonsfresh thyme, chopped
- Enough water to cover the chicken
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 2 teaspoons of chicken base
Preparation:
- Put the chicken, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, and bay leaves in a large heavy-bottomed stock pot
- Add enough cold water to cover all ingredients plus an inch or two
- Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a gentle simmer
- Add chicken base
- Cook until meat starts to come off of the bones, skimming off the foam
- Remove chicken from water and remove all skin and chicken from the bones
- Remove bay leaves
- Add egg noodles and cook for 5 minutes
- Return meat to pot
- Add parsley and thyme
- Serve hot and with love
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