06/20/2026
People say America doesn’t have a traditional healing food culture.
I think we do. We just don’t recognize it as one.
It wasn’t always herbs simmering on the stove or recipes passed down for generations.
Sometimes it was cinnamon toast.
Sometimes it was chicken soup from a can.
Sometimes it was tea with too much honey or ginger ale gone flat.
When I was growing up, if you were sick, you stayed home.
You watched The Price Is Right.
You sat on the couch under a blanket.
Someone checked your forehead every so often.
And eventually a plate of cinnamon toast appeared.
Nobody claimed it was medicinal (for the record, cinnamon is).
The toast wasn’t the point.
The point was that somebody made it for you.
When we talk about traditional healing, we spend a lot of time talking about ingredients.
I wonder if we should spend a little more time talking about care.
American mothers healed children with soup, toast, tea, blankets, cartoons, cool washcloths, and a day spent on the couch.
Not because those things cured illness.
Because they comforted a child who didn’t feel well.
We’ve become very good at asking what something does.
We’ve become less interested in how something feels.
But comfort has always been part of healing.
And mothers knew that.
