Chicken Soup for the Soul was actually a health food!?

Do you remember the book Chicken Soup for the Soul, written by famous American motivational speakers Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, one of the best-selling books of the 1990s? The book has been translated into 47 languages worldwide, with over 100 million people having read it. As such, it would be no exaggeration to say that it is a soup of the people of the world. But then the question is, why was the book named as such in the first place, featuring chicken soup? Actually, the book's title reflects America's health food culture. In the United States, people eat chicken soup when you have a cold or a respiratory problem. That is to say, the broth obtained by boiling chicken is a well-known health food and also a natural cold remedy among Americans. In fact, in the U.S., doctors often prescribe chicken soup instead of medicine for patients showing early symptoms of a cold. In this light, it is possible that the authors titled their book in this way in the hopes that the 101 heart-warming stories contained in the book would heal the readers' souls just like chicken soup cures a cold. And there is a rather amusing story related to it. Interestingly, when the Korean edition of the book was first released in South Korea, it didn't sell very well. However, with a change of its title to 101 Stories That Will Open Your Heart, the book became massively popular in this country. This may be attributable to a lack of awareness among Koreans of chicken soup, which constitutes an important part of America's traditional health food culture.

Chicken Soup for the Soul

Health food was also consumed as medicine?!

In the past, when living in cities was not common among people, going to a hospital was not easy, nor was getting access to medicine. So people in those times maintained their health by preventing diseases and getting nutrition through health food. Such forms of health food, whose efficacy have been proven by their long periods of existence dating back to the time when your grandma's grandma was alive, continue to serve as everyday nutritional supplements and are therefore deemed indispensable.
Health food is usually made of high-protein ingredients such as meat, chicken, and eels as well as of mineral- and vitamin-rich ingredients such as seasonal fruits and vegetables. And depending on the cooking method, they can be made either hot to heat up your body or cold and sour to work up your appetite.

Heat for heat!
Beating the heat by eating hot food?

The mechanism of health food: Balancing your body temperature and the outside temperature

The term "health food" usually remind people of hot soup dishes that make them sweat a bowlful. After finishing a bowl of hot soup with sweat all over your face, you feel like you have been reinvigorated with your eyes sparkling with life. But hot soup in hot summer? It doesn't make sense that you have to eat hot dishes to beat the heat in summer. Maybe more proper would be eating cold dishes?

Actually, the mechanism of hot health food is rather simple. The sweat produced as you eat a hot dish takes the heat out of your skin's surface, and the hot dish, in turn, raises the temperature of your body which has now become cold compared to the hot weather, consequently boosting your immune system. The reason that you are more prone to fatigue and bellyaches in the hot summer is that the difference in temperature between your body and the heat concentrated on the surface of your skin is significant. Eating hot food that warms your body rather than cold food creates a thermal balance in your body, and the sweat you shed during the eating process takes the heat out of the surface of your skin. As a result, you feel like your body has become healthier and your stamina has been replenished. Perhaps because of that, Koreans experience a feeling of refreshment when eating hot soup, expressing that feeling by saying, "It's refreshing."

In fact, because things like refrigerators and water purifiers have enabled easy access to cold water, many modern people are said to be unable to maintain their body temperature at an average temperature of 36.5°C, staying in a low body temperature state. When your body temperature drops, your immune system also weakens, making you more susceptible to colds and other illnesses. And that's when hot food comes into play. It boosts the blood circulation in your body and invigorates your metabolism by heating your body up. So, everyday food that heats your body up can be said to be health food as well as an effective preventive measure against colds.