‘Is chicken soup an essential medicine?’ Israeli researchers wondered in 1999. They may have gone a little crazy when they answered in the affirmative (“essential medicine” is a bit of an exaggeration), but chicken soup seems genuinely helpful.
Although soup without chicken also helps partly. Because hot, moist air rises from hot soup. And that helps to open your airways a bit, research confirms, making it easier to breathe again. So you could also put a bowl of hot water in front of you. Or tomato soup.
Ingredients in chicken soup can relieve complaints
Still, you could certainly get extra profit from the ingredients of chicken soup. Apparently Grandma was well versed in physiological knowledge, because the mechanism that scientists at the Nebraska Medical Center (United States) discovered in 2000 is not simple. They saw that components of chicken soup help to inhibit certain immune cells, the so-called neutrophils.
Slowing down your immune system doesn’t seem useful, but it can help with a cold. Complaints such as sniffling are the result of an overreaction of your immune system. The anti-inflammatory effect of chicken soup could alleviate such complaints, although the researchers did not check whether this is actually the case.
In any case, we should not overestimate the chicken soup effect. The soup does not tackle the core of the problem: a virus infection. In any case, you have to take it easy, but that may be a bit more pleasant with chicken from a bowl.
How tenable is the claim?
Compliments to grandma. Her chicken soup may relieve a cold, but the stuff is not curative. To feel really good, your body must first fight the virus.
Also interesting: does extra vitamin C help if you have a cold? And can healthy eating fight the coronavirus?
