As Winter approaches, we all start thinking about colds and the flu. We all are looking for cures and almost everyone has heard that Grandma's chicken soup would cure the common cold and upper respiratory ailments. Guess what? Grandma might not be far from right. While, there is some scientific suggestion that chicken soup may not actually cure the common cold, it can certainly make it a lot easier to deal with. Congested noses and throats may be opened up by the steam from the chicken soup and, eating chicken soup provides important fluids -- fluids important for fighting infection and preventing dehydration. Some researchers also suggest that substances in chicken soup help reduce the inflammation that commonly accompanies upper respiratory infections thereby providing relief from many of the uncomfortable symptoms often associated with the common cold.
Source: Chicken Soup and Sickness. Barrett B. Viral Upper Respiratory Infection. In: Rakel D, ed. Rakel: Integrative Medicine. 2nd ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier;2007:chap 20. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002067.htm. Accessed 09/25/09
Some years ago when I was running a one-woman bookshop I came down with a bad cold/virus/flu and took myself off to a Chinese medical pracitioner recommended by one of my clients. He gave me a script and sent me off to an address in a nearby suburb which on arrival I was surprised to find was a Chinese food outlet. The subscription turned out to be a package of little bottles of “concentrated chicken essence” To obtain the essence, many chickens were simmered in a sealed container over a period of many days. The concentrate was to be added to so much water and taken three times a day. Tasted like “medicine” but it did work and I think also had a tonic effect.
Unless the chicken comes from a small family farm where chickens actually run around outdoors and their manure goes back to the garden, I recommend eating vegetable soup, without the chicken. Here is why:
All women should educate themselves about how modern day chickens are raised. Simply Google “how poultry is raised.” With few exceptions, for most chickens their lives from hatch to slaughter are one of unrelenting horror.
Chickens are typically crowded by the thousands into huge, factory-like warehouses where they can barely move. Shortly after hatching, both chickens and turkeys have the ends of their beaks cut off, and turkeys also have the ends of their toes clipped off. These mutilations are performed without anesthesia, to reduce injuries that result when stressed birds are driven to fighting.
Today’s “broiler” (meat) chickens have been genetically altered to grow twice as fast and twice as large as their ancestors. An industry journal explains that “broilers now grow so rapidly that the heart and lungs are not developed well enough to support the remainder of the body, resulting in congestive heart failure and tremendous death losses.”
Confined in unsanitary, disease-ridden factory farms, the birds also frequently succumb to heat prostration, infectious diseases, and cancer.
Poultry are specifically excluded from the federal Humane Slaughter Act which requires that other animals be stunned before they are slaughtered. However, many slaughter plants first stun the birds in an electrified water bath in order to immobilize them and expedite assembly line killing. Poultry slaughterhouses commonly set the electrical current lower than what is required to render the birds unconscious because of concerns that too much electricity would damage the carcasses and diminish their value. The result is that while birds are immobilized after stunning, they are still capable of feeling pain, and many emerge from the stunning tank still conscious.
After the shackled birds pass through the stunning tank, their throats are slashed, usually by a mechanical blade. Inevitably, the blade misses some birds, who may still be moving and struggling after improper stunning. Proceeding to the next station on the assembly line — the scalding tank — the birds are submerged in boiling hot water. Those missed by the killing blade are boiled alive.
While I appreciate the spirit of the article (encouraging women to eat healthy food and build up their immune system) there are many other health and environmental reasons to rethink the wisdom of eating chicken soup!
Suza Francina,
Author, Yoga and the Wisdom of Menopause, and other publications on women’s health.
It is the steam from ANY hot soup that opens up noses and throats. The fluids that prevent dehydration are the broth and not the chicken. And most importantly, the mystery “substances in chicken soup that reduce inflammation” are the vegetables, not the chicken. Chicken is acid, and one needs alkaline to reduce inflammation.
Wonderful, don’t they also say that tiger penis is good for impotence? Let’s not forget the amazing medicinal properties of bear gall bladders! For those of you that believe everything you’re told and everything you read, my first two comments are sarcastic ones.
Hmmm. Steam, fluids, and something to reduce inflammation. And we need dead chickens to do this? As someone who is immune deficient I can assure you that there are other ways to accomplish all three that are humane and healthier than eating soup from factory raised chickens!
I support all the women to say that Vegetable soup with lots of garlic, coriander seeds works just as well. I always take this and it works wonders.. !!
Let’s not support factory-farmed chickens on
humanitairan and compassionate grounds, folks.
I’ve said that least 1612109 times. The problem this like that is they are just too compilcated for the average bird, if you know what I mean