11.
Food FIXES for Immunity
To protect against sniffles, the flu, and more serious bodily
invaders, you need to feed the troops.
Have you ever wondered this: How did Grandma know?
How did she know that the minute you got sick, you should be pumped up
with orange juice and chicken soup? Our grandmothers—and their grandmothers
and theirs—always had a food fix. They knew that good eats could make you
well before science caught up. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was trial and
error. Maybe it was wisdom passed down the family tree right along with
holiday rituals and wedding rings.
Or maybe our elders were up on their history of Moses Maimonides. The
twelfth-century Jewish physician and philosopher is said to have been the first to
write about the medicinal benefits of hen and rooster eaten in their own broth.
He wrote that this concoction “neutralizes the bodily constitution,” which, really,
is just a twelfth-century way of saying “food fixes.” (And then he went a little
off the deep end, claiming that eating the testicles of any living creature could
increase libido!)
Chicken soup is actually more of a proxy for two other things that are
happening—hydration and warmth, both of which can help thin the mucus of a
nasty cold and open things up, so you feel better when you’re sick. In addition,
chicken soup usually has a lot of sodium, so it encourages you to drink fluids,
always a good thing. Other research even suggests that it works by changing the
function of your immune cells so they’re better able to move around and help
fortify you. (These reasons are good enough to freeze some homemade broth and