Even my Asian mother tells me to have chicken noodle soup when I’ve come down with a cold (the alternative of course being a tar-colored concoction of medicinal herbs that would make our house stink to high heaven). So how did chicken noodle soup of all things become the cross-cultural cold cure of choice for mothers everywhere? According to Wikipedia, the Persian physician Avicenna wrote of the curing powers of chicken soup in the 10th century, and the Egyptian sage Maimonides followed suit in the 12th century (Reference: http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/161/12/1532#R8-23 ). By information cascade theory, since there are two “accepts”, an “accept” cascade has begun. Private signals are likely to be high to reinforce the cascade, either by placebo effect or because chicken soup does in fact have curative properties. For comparison, another medical practice that cascaded in popularity was the use of leeches in blood-letting. However, this practice was shown to not be helpful and was in fact detrimental to one’s health. Thus the cascade was brought to a halt when patient signals became overwhelmingly negative.

Perhaps the fact that the popularity of chicken noodle soup as a cold remedy has been sustained for such a long period of time is evidence enough of its effectiveness. In my personal experience, the effect of chicken noodle soup has been marginal. Moreover, the side effect is that I can no longer consume chicken noodle soup on a normal basis, since it reminds me of being sick. Maybe others have had better success.

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On a slightly different note, I have found that many websites have directly copied from the Wikipedia article (specifically, the line: “According to food historians chicken soup was prescribed as a cure for the common cold in Ancient Egypt…”) with no reference to the Wiki article or to the original article. These include posts on Yahoo Answers, various blogs, and even in a World of Warcraft forum. This hints at a larger problem: the prevalence of plagiarism on the internet.