The Perfect Cold Cure? A Hot Bowl of Chicken Noodle Soup
You know a cold when it’s coming – the itchy eyes, scratchy throat, and sniffles soon turn into a full-blown attack of sneezing, coughing, and the dreaded “I-can’t-bweeth-out-of-muh-nose” feeling. Luckily, nothing quite hits the spot and allays the symptoms of a vicious cold like a hot bowl of chicken noodle soup. And science may have the answer as to why the concoction works so well.
The cold virus is a tricky one to avoid. After all, if you are constantly surrounded my people, such as you would be in an office, classroom, or even family setting, all it takes is one sick person to pass the cold bug around. Before long, you’ll find yourself reaching for chicken noodle soup to battle your symptoms. And it always seems to work, or in the very least, help. But how? Though there is no definitive reason for how it is that chicken noodle soup can be a cold-curing miracle, there are several plausible theories to explain the power behind the broth. For one, consuming a big bowl of chicken noodle soup ensures that you get plenty of fluids. One of the most important things to help ill individuals get better is to stay hydrated, and regularly eating bowls of soup during an illness will ensure that you are getting plenty of fluids. The warmth of the soup helps in soothing throats scratched raw from coughing as well, and also helps to ease some of the phlegm that may have been inducing those coughs. In addition, the warmth of the soup helps to break up some of the mucus in your nasal cavities and reduce swelling, giving you room to breathe.
The salt content is another weapon in chicken noodle soup’s cold-fighting arsenal. Most chicken noodle soup is salty, and getting a certain amount of sodium in your body also helps your body to retain fluids better. This is why athletes drink power drinks – those drinks have sodium in them to keep the athletes hydrated longer. The salt in chicken noodle soup acts the same way – it enables the body to absorb the water from the soup better, keeping you hydrated for longer. Also, each bowl of chicken noodle soup also comes loaded with vitamins from the vegetables – after all, you’re using the same water the vegetables were boiled in, which retains the nutrients – as well as protein and carbohydrates from the chicken and noodles.
While there are no official reasons as to why chicken noodle soup possesses such curative properties, there are plenty of plausible theories as to how it works its magic. Or, perhaps, it is simply all of the love that caretakers put into the bowls of soup they feed to their sniffling loved ones.
