Warm Body And Soul

Three healing soups from around the world to get you through the cold and flu season.

- Jennifer Pirtle

During the vacuum of winter, few things are more comforting than a steaming bowl of homemade soup, especially if you’re feeling under the weather. Part of what makes soup so therapeutic, beyond its individual ingredients of course, is the heady helping of love and affection that often comes with it. Most of us can remember being pampered with soup as a child, and those memories can well up in adulthood with every spoonful we slurp. Wonderfully consoling and nourishing, soup is the balm of nearly every culture, fortifying the body and soothing the soul. Here are several healing favorites from around the globe.

Jewish penicillin

If you are Jewish, your bubba—or grandmother—probably told you that chicken soup would help cure your cold. She wasn’t the first to sing its praises: All the way back in the 12th century, the Egyptian Jewish physician and philosopher, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimonides, wrote about the benefits of chicken soup for respiratory conditions.

Both were on to something. In the 1990s, Stephen Rennard, MD, a pulmonary specialist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, tested chicken soups in the laboratory and found that chemicals in the broth based elixir could clear a stuffy nose by inhibiting inflammation of the cells in the nasal passages. Other researchers have noted that cysteine, an amino acid found in chicken, functions similarly to acetylcysteine, a drug prescribed for bronchitis and other respiratory problems. The vapor and aroma of chicken soup are apparently important factors, too: Sipping soup through a straw really doesn’t produce the same beneficial result as consuming the hot soup with a spoon.