Chicken Soup

When my roommates started getting sick this week, I decided to make them some chicken soup. Even though canned soup tastes pretty good and can be heated up in seconds, there's something about making it yourself in a big pot on the stove that makes cold symptoms go away. I decided to do a little research on what makes chicken soup good for colds and found a lot of interesting information, most of it inconclusive. Even though some studies have found that chicken soup does relieve symptoms, nobody can say how or what the magic ingredient (or ingredients) in soup actually ease symptoms. For me, I think that having someone care enough about you to make you a warm bowl of soup makes all the difference. More than just the placebo effect, caring can go a long way. When I gave one of my roommates her bowl of soup, she had a look on her face that seemed to acknowledge that I cared about her and wanted her to feel better. This was two days ago, and she already has all of her energy back and seems to be considerably less sniffly. While most of that is probably due to her own immune system, I like to think that my soup helped a little.

Here's a summary of the scientific findings about colds and chicken soup: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/the-science-of-chicken-soup/