Medicinal Cuisine

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."

— A quote frequently but Wrongfully Attributed to Hippocrates

Everyone knows that Soup Is Medicine. When you're sick, nothing makes you feel better than a piping-hot bowl of soup.

But sometimes it goes further than that. In fiction, food, be it specific recipes or specific ingredients, can work as well as any prescribed medication. These range from treating minor and severe illnesses, energizing and strengthening the body, or even resuscitating those on the verge of death. Expect this medicinal food to be highly sought after, expensive, and hard to get.

More grounded examples may use food in tandem with more traditional medical treatment or simply as home remedies for various ills.

To some extent, this is Truth in Television. Many illnesses, such as heart disease, scurvy, and osteoporosis can be caused by nutritional imbalances and deficiencies. Changing a patient's diet to correct these imbalances can potentially alleviate symptoms or eliminate the illness entirely. There are an increasing number of studies into whether or not the institution of prescribed diets could be used as both a preventative and a curative measure in treating chronic illness.

A Super-Trope to Soup Is Medicine and Hot Drink Cure, where piping hot soups or drinks are given to those feeling under the weather. See also Warm Milk Helps You Sleep, where warm milk is used as a remedy for insomnia. Compare Hyperactive Metabolism, where characters can heal wounds by eating enough calories for a Healing Factor to patch up. Related to Power-Up Food, where eating certain foods can give one superpowers. There is certain to be a Grandma's Recipe for this when someone gets sick. The fantastical kinds of medicinal cooking is also likely to involve a Fantastic Medicinal Bodily Product in the recipe somewhere.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Delicious in Dungeon: When Marcille runs out of mana and is injured trying to deal with a water elemental, Team Chef Senshi prepares nutritious and iron-rich grilled kelpie liver to restore her strength until someone with healing magic can come by to repair her wound. After the other members of the party manage to kill the elemental, reducing it to mana-rich water, Marcille tries drinking it to restore her mana but is convinced to let Senshi use it as the base for a stew first, under the logic that nutrients are easier to absorb if eaten with food.
• In Final Fantasy: Lost Stranger, Shogo draws on his knowledge of Final Fantasy XIV to invoke this trope, as Libra allows him to see that food can provide notable increases in certain stats. He tests this theory by swapping his party's meals around to better reflect their chosen professions. Everyone is surprised at how much better they're doing afterward. Sharuru also brings up the idea of sommeliers at ultra-high-class restaurants recommending dishes tailored to the clients.
• In Food Wars!, Erina's assistant, Hisako Arato, was born into a family of experts in traditional Chinese medicine. She incorporates this knowledge into her cooking, such as a special curry spice blend that can turn even the wimpiest men into buff action movie stars.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable: Tonio and his stand, Pearl Jam, can grant the meals he prepares medicinal properties that can heal an ailment of choice, such as curing indigestion or reliving sleep deprivation. There's a catch though, and it's quite gruesome: the healing process works by painfully destroying or expelling a part of the body and replacing it with a healthy new version. Curing indigestion for example will burst your intestines from your abdomen and create new ones in their place. The customer will feel afterwards though like nothing happened, and feel healthier to boot.
• My-HiME: In the Audio Dramas, "Demonic Uproar"/"Natsuki's Desperations" Natsuki is home with a severe cold. Mai initially makes her Okayu (rice porridge) a traditional dish for the sick. However, when that, and medicine have no effect on the cold, Midori suggests a folk remedy involving a negi and the patient's posterior.
• In Mission: Yozakura Family, Mutsumi sets out to make a traditional Yozakura manju bun to help treat the Heroic RRoD Taiyo is experiencing after being dosed with her blood to give him the powers of a Yozakura. The ingredients are downright lethal, including potassium cyanide, poisonous pufferfish, and hydrochloric acid, and it's fully intended to knock the consumer out on consumption. It works as intended after Taiyo manages to help her finish it, though it still knocks him unconscious in the process.
• In one anime-only arc of Naruto, the Curry of Life is a dish made only by the store that bears its name. Its hellishly spicy flavor is said to be able to instantly resuscitate an unconscious or dying person, while those brave and resilient enough to eat multiple portions may even be strengthened by it. However, those who have a low tolerance for this kind of food may be knocked unconscious instead.
• Ken from Nobunaga no Chef is not just concerned about the flavours of the food he cooks but also their nutritional values, and frequently rattles off the vitamin and mineral contents of his food, as well as the health benefits of the ingredients he used, when presenting his dishes. When he is captured by Shingen Takeda's forces, Akiyama suggests that he should make Ken serve as Shingen's doctor because of this.
• In One Piece, the Kamabakka Kingdom has a number of special cooking recipes collectively called "Attack Cuisine" that are both delicious and incredibly nutritious, to the point that all of the residents of the kingdom have powerful and fit physiques. While it is freely offered to visitors, only those who have gone through "Bride Training" and take up Newkama Kenpo are allowed to learn the recipes, though Sanji later takes up Emporio Ivankov's challenge in order to learn them himself.
• Toriko:
  • Meteor Garlic is so packed with nutrition that anyone who consumes it instantly undergoes a Growing Muscles Sequence and becomes absurdly muscular for a time. According to Match, it's also known as the "Doping Garlic", as it provides enough energy to work all day and all night for a month without rest.
  • Medicinal Mochi is made from a special Colored Rice that can neutralize any poison it comes in contact with. It is the only known antidote for the poisonous Green Rain emitted by the monstrous Four Beast. Its potent curative properties are only matched by the difficulty of its preparation, with even world-class chefs struggling to prepare it until Komatsu develops a way to simplify the process.

Eastern Animation

• KikoRiki: In the episode "The Chill", Dokko has a cold, so Olga, Barry, Carlin, and Rosa try to make him better by giving him jam and fruit. Wally tries to catch a cold so that he will be given snacks too but changes his mind when Chiko and Krash catch colds instead and are treated with shots.

Fan Works

• In the Ghostbusters (1984) fanfic Egon's Day Off!, Egon apparently has a bad cold, so Winston's Aunt Florence gives him gumbo. Apparently, when Winston was a kid, she always gave him gumbo when he got sick.
• In This Bites!, Sanji creates what he calls the "Death's Door Lunchbox" for Luffy in his attempt to save his brother's life. It promises to pick Luffy back up to full strength from near death due to his Hyperactive Metabolism. But it's a Dangerous Forbidden Technique in a box, as it's loaded with enough nutrients to kill a normal person. Luffy has to be on the brink of death to eat it or the food will kill him.

Film — Animation

• Dinosaur: As the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits take shelter in a cave, the wounded Bruton insists on being The Aloner. Despite his haughtiness, Plio the lemur offers him a cabbage-like herb that she claims aids in healing. Though Bruton doesn't seem grateful, he does take the herb.
• Encanto: Julieta's gift is that her food is able to cure people, from simple bruises to broken bones. She even ended up meeting her husband because of his propensity to get stung by bees. She also seems to be specially fond of making arepas.
• In the film The Simpsons Movie, Homer falls ill from being washed up ashore in Alaska and gets nursed back to health by an engorged Inuit woman who makes him drink a spicy liquid concoction. Homer sips some, screams loudly from his mouth and tongue being on fire, and then he asks for more.

Literature

• Defied in Michael Crichton's thriller The Andromeda Strain, when the only two survivors of an alien contagion that wiped out Piedmont, New Mexico, reveal the contagion's one weakness: it can only survive within a narrow pH window. An infant is resistant because going hungry made its body too alkaline, while an alcoholic old sot survived because his blood was too acidic. The Wildfire oncologists instruct the nurse not feed the baby, to keep its blood pH above 7.5, and therefore immune to the contagion.
• In Lauren Kate's book "Waterfall", Eureka Boudreaux's group learns about quirks, which are magical abilities each person has. Eureka's father discovers that he can detect what's ailing a person and use food to help heal them.
• In The Camp Half-Blood Series, Greek and Roman demigods can consume ambrosia and nectar, the food of the gods, to quickly recover from their wounds and exhaustion. The downside is that their mortal bodies can only handle so much, and eating too much of it will cause them to combust. This is why it's reserved for emergencies.
• In the Harry Potter universe, chocolate is the best restorative for a person who has been in the presence of Dementors. It instantly restores happiness and warmth to the body, both of which are siphoned away by the Dementors whenever they get too close.
• In one of the Spice and Wolf short stories, Holo takes ill, and Lawrence discusses the four humors with her, as well as the idea that illness is caused by an imbalance in the body, and therefore treatable by moderation to one's diet. He describes the four things to balance as heat, cold, wet, and dry. Since a fever is being too hot, he says one must have cold food, and since she is dry, she needs moisture. He gives her watered-down cider and a concoction using sheep's milk.

Live-Action TV

• On Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, White Mage Aunt Hilda is known throughout the coven for her skill not just as a healer, but as a Supreme Chef as well. She brings the two together with magical dishes that have specific curative effects: for example, her shortbread cookies can provide a healthy dose of Laser-Guided Amnesia (very useful for maintaining The Masquerade), while her eggnog recipe can cure people's alcoholism with a single cup.
• On Family Matters, Carl Winslow has a recipe for homemade juice that can instantly cure hangovers. Steve is grateful for it after he inadvertently gets drunk at a party, but his joy is short-lived when he discovers that juice's main side effect is an instant Potty Emergency.
• In an episode of Full House, Danny suffers from laryngitis until he visits Gia's house, where her mother Claire whips up an old family recipe for him. A single spoonful of the liquid is enough to completely cure him (although this raises questions about why Claire hasn't sold the recipe to make millions).
• A magical (and punny) example shows up in Sabrina the Teenage Witch. When Sabrina feels like she isn't getting enough recognition for all of her hard work, she conjures up a "just dessert" that makes people praise everything she does, including blinking and breathing. She eventually realizes that her attention-seeking is taking away accolades from others who deserve them and looks up an antidote to the spell. It turns out to be a literal humble pie — one bite of the disgusting dish is enough to break the enchantment.

Manhua

• Kitchen Goddess And The Assassin: Willow makes Angelica Brown Sugar Egg, a dish of eggs, angelica sinensis, and other medicinal herbs cooked in brown sugar, for an injured Sol in Chapter 40.

Other Sites

• Some diseases on Neopets are cured with food:
  • Chickaroo, which causes the infected pet to think they're a chicken, is cured with herbal scrambled eggs.
  • Neoblues, which is similar to depression, is cured with a tasty pie.
  • Neopox is cured with "neopox pizza".
  • Sneezles, which causes a runny nose and sneezing, is cured with a magic cookie.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The humble Druid spell "Goodberry" creates or enchants a few berries so that each one can heal a point of damage and provide a day's nourishment.
  • The mid-level "Heroes' Feast" spell creates a magnificent banquet that cures all poisons and diseases in the people who eat it, among other ongoing benefits.
  • The 5th Edition feat "Chef" lets you prepare meals while taking a short rest that boost the amount of hit points characters recover from spending Hit Dice during the rest.
• Pathfinder: A Witch can learn to cook magical meals that can cure poisons or disease, grant power-ups, or suspend the effects of old age. The catch is that they need to be made from intelligent humanoids.

Video Games

• Cold and Flu Invasion features "anti-flu candy", which cures all the sick NPCs of their colds and flu.
• In the third chapter of Dark Chronicle, Max and Monica travel to Balance Valley to restore history and bring Crest the Great Sage back into existence. Unfortunately, Crest is dead, and his apprentice Lin is the only person who knows what happened to him — but she's inhaled a toxic mist that is killing her. Monica recalls that in her time, there was a great chef named Lao Chao who prepared dumplings that could cure any illness, and the first part of the chapter is spent both restoring Lao Chao's bistro to the timestream and procuring the ingredients for the dumplings.
• Enforced in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Cooking and eating are the only way for Link to recover hearts as opposed to drinking health potions in previous games. Depending on the ingredients, and to some extent how Link combines them with each other when cooking, Link can cook up a wide variety of platters with an equal variety of effects that benefit his health. Some of the effects include increased resistance to cold or hot temperatures, while others may only recover a few hearts or completely restore Link to full health and add on several more hearts.
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • Food produced by a culinarian offers stat boosts to the consumer on top of a 3% bonus to experience gained in combat, by crafting, or by gathering for 30 minutes. While low-level recipes offer minuscule bonuses, high-level recipes can offer sizable stat buffs that can lead to a much sharper increase in performance comparable to major buffing skills or multiple materia melds.
  • When an amaro named Skip is poisoned by poachers, Bethric, head of the Facet of Nourishing, commissions the Warrior of Darkness to prepare a series of delicious and highly nutritious meals to assist in the amaro's rehabilitation process. This proves especially important as Skip has lasting trauma from having his fodder poisoned. As such, he won't eat anything unless the Warrior prepares it and someone else tastes it in front of him to prove it's safe to eat.
  • Frithik, head of the Facet of Fishing, notes that there's been an uptick in disease at the Crystarium. His scholarly research points to a nutritional deficiency caused by a lack of food variety. So he asks the Warrior of Darkness to catch varieties of fish consumed before the Flood in hopes of correcting this nutritional deficit. This includes catching eighteye eels to treat "night blindness", creamy oysters to treat pica, and longmirror clams to treat heart palpitations and dizziness. Their efforts work with flying colors.
  • The Sharlayan dish "archon loaf" is designed to be a compact, easily-made foodstuff packed with all the nutrition one could possibly need. Unfortunately, it's also disgusting, and its successor panaloaf is even worse. The Faculty of Medicine Studium Deliveries revolve around Debroye's efforts to make it palatable so Sharlayan doesn't suffer a Fate Worse than Death by having to eat it constantly in the event of a food crisis.
• Moshi Monsters: In the mission "Moptop Mischief", when Zack is poisoned, the antidote comes in the form of a particular kind of sushi.
• In Outward, food is an important way to replenish health, stamina, and mana; cure diseases and other Status Effects; and gain Power Ups. The effects can be enhanced through Cooking Mechanics.
• In Persona 5, Joker can cook curry at Leblanc for use as an item in Mementos or a Palace. Consuming it restores SP to all allies, making it invaluable for protracted fights. Vending machines, stores, and restaurants around Tokyo also sell a variety of food items that can restore HP or SP or in some cases cure certain status ailments.
• In Pokémon Sword and Shield, curry prepared at Pokemon Camp is capable of restoring a Pokémon's HP, PP, or even status conditions depending on its taste rating.
• In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet curry is replaced by sandwiches, and Team Chef Arven's storyline revolves around collecting Power-Up Food herbs to heal his crippled partner.
• Taken to its logical extreme in The Sims 3 and The Sims 4 with Ambrosia, which requires a maxed-out Cooking skill, an expensive recipe, and multiple rare ingredients to prepare but can bring people Back from the Dead. As a bonus, it's Impossibly Delicious Food.
• This is a standard mechanic for Tales Series. Players can cook from a menu provided they have the ingredients and can be used to recover HP/TP after every battle, as well as removing Status Effects depending on what is being cooked.

Western Animation

• The Loud House: In "One Flu Over the Loud House", when the Loud family starts getting the flu one by one, Clyde tries to make "heal meals" for them, which involve egg rolls and guacamole.
• In an episode of Postman Pat, Julian gets sick with what appears to be a very mild cold, but he gets better within a few hours. However, he pretends to still be sick and Pat gives him some ice cream for his sore throat.
• Rugrats: Discussed in "A Very McNulty Birthday", when the boy babies think that the Post-Treatment Lollipop the doctor gives out is what cures sickness, so they try to find lollipops to cure their female friends of their alleged cooties.
• In an episode of Tinga Tinga Tales, the giraffe eats honey to cure her stomachache.

Real Life

• There are countless home remedies for treating ailments as an alternative to using drugs, many of them involving food. Perhaps the most famous of them are chicken soup for a cold and drinking hot tea mixed with honey to soothe a sore throat.
• "Food therapy" is an old and well-documented branch of traditional Chinese medicine concerning the use of food to treat various illnesses and disorders. Different food groups, flavors, and cooking methods are believed to impart different influences on the body, down to targeting specific organs, such that eating certain foods can be used to combat the negative influences that disease has on the body. For example, a sore throat, a "hot" condition, would be countered by eating "cooling" foods such as green vegetables, or other sour or watery foodstuffs.
• Before it was extracted to use as a pill, aspirin as a pain reliever was commonly provided by steeping tea with ash bark to extract the chemical from the wood.
• Scurvy was the scourge of sailors up until the 18th century, when Scottish Royal Navy surgeon James Lind conducted an experiment that proved that the illness could be treated and prevented by feeding sailors citrus fruits while they're at sea.
• The Russian food "Doctor's Sausage" was specifically invented as a calorie-rich, easily digestible foodstuff for sick patients to help them regain or maintain their body weights. People developed a taste for it and started cooking with it.
• It is standard procedure for blood centers to give donors water, juice, and snacks rich in salt and sugar following a donation. This helps replenish fluids lost during the donation process and mitigate symptoms of lightheadedness or dizziness. Doctors also recommend blood donors eat foods rich in iron to prevent iron deficiency anemia.
• The beverage Hippocras is a sort of mulled wine that was believed to have medicinal properties during the Roman Empire. The spices were filtered out with a conical cloth bag before serving.
• For people suffering from eating disorders, food quite literally becomes medicine, as their bodies have been deprived of calories for so long that nutrient-dense meals are required to bring them back to health (although they must be reintroduced slowly, as eating too much after starving for so long would cause problems). Since eating disorders are a psychological illness as well, many therapies involve restoring the patient's distorted relationship with food to a healthier level.

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