Should you feed a fever or starve a cold?

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Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever

The addage is "feed a cold, starve a fever." It makes sense if you think about having the flu vs. a cold. A flu is an intense reaction that takes a lot of metabolic activity. Digestion is a demanding task. As a Fever is usually short lived (1-3 days), not eating may be a better way of allowing your body to contribute the maximum amount of metabolic activity to recovery. If the fever lasts longer, then maintaining adequate available energy may becomes a problem. Natural doctors recommend diluted vegetable (preferred) or fruit juice (unsweetened) for energy during an illness.

A cold lasts 7-14 days. As the infection primarily involves the mucous membranes of the head and neck, systemic challenges aren't as pronounced. As the system isn't as stressed as with a Flu, there's less need to reduce demands on the digestive system. It stands to reason that, even if you're eating with a cold, less demanding foods (hard to digest foods, lots of food, complex foods) will be more supportive of the body as a whole.

If your body is a furnace, food is the fuel. Simple foods are more like gasoline, complex foods more like green wood. You don't want to dampen the fire, and you do have to feed it. Our bodies have sufficient reserves to manage 3 days of light activity without adverse effects (assuming that we're otherwise healthy) A week of fasting in the winter (the normal time for colds and flus) isn't recommended anywhere that I know of.

Here is more information from WikiAnswers contributors:

• Eating doesn't really matter. Just drink lots of fluids.

• As I have always understood this adage it applies to temperature. Feed a fever means bundle up and sweat it out. Starve a cold means bundle up and warm up.

• It would seem that both are wrong. Most Doctors will tell you that it is important to reduce stresses on your body when sick. Both starving and overeating produce unwanted stress. So, unless you have a stomach disorder, eat moderately to maintain your strength in either case.

• (From Cecil Adam's "Straight Dope") Your version of the proverb is the traditional one, but you can find citations in the literature that have it the other way around. The idea, if not the exact wording, dates back to 1574, when a dictionary maker named Withals wrote, "Fasting is a great remedie of feuer."

You're thinking: this guy wrote a dictionarie? His medical advice wasn't so hot either. Doctors have been trying to stamp out the above piece of folklore for years. Current medical thinking is that you want to keep an even strain when you're sick with either a cold or a fever, and you certainly don't want to stress your system by stuffing or starving yourself.

Nobody's sure where the notion of feeding colds and so on arose. (It surely didn't originate with Withals.) One somewhat dubious explanation has it that the proverb really means "If you feed a cold now, you'll have to starve a fever later." A more plausible interpretation is that the feed-a-cold idea arose out of a folk understanding of the disease process, namely that there were two kinds of illnesses, those caused by low temperatures (colds and chills) and those caused by high temperatures (fever). If you had a chill, you wanted to stoke the interior fires, so you pigged. If you had a fever, you didn't want things to overheat, so you slacked off on the fuel.

Bottom line: tell your kid to chill. But I can relate. When I had sniffles as a kid the feed-a-cold thing was usually good for a few extra Twinkies. So you'll just have to forgive me if, in the delirium of a 99-degree temperature, I used to imagine it was feed a fever too.

• The way it was explained to me was that if you have a cold you usually didn't want to or couldn't eat and needed to, so you "fed" a cold, basically not binging, but simply remembering to eat. However, if you have a fever, you may crave a lot more food, and may need to back off and need more moderation, so you would need to "starve" a fever so as not to make yourself more sick--keep those hunger pangs in check. And that came from a very, very wise old wife, so it must be true!

• The point is when you have fever your body is working to fight something in your system. You should eat light since the body needs energy to digest and it is better to let the body focus on the "fight at hand" and just eat light until the fever breaks. With a cold, your immune system is involved for up to 10 days, and you need to keep those guys fueled (antibody production). So you eat things that encourage their production, such as vitamin C rich foods and fruit, and soups, and teas, becasue they add needed fluid, and because warm fluid help to break up the mucous associated with colds. ?(as a side note for those who love milk and cannot give it up during cold, heat it up a little it sems to produce less mucous that way) Holisitc Nutritionist

• Your body needs energy to fight whatever viral or bacterial infection it has to, so "starving" is not a good idea. Though your body initially uses energy to digest, the digestion process returns more energy than it uses. Gargling with very hot, salty water soothes a sore throat and disinfects the mouth and throat. Flushing your sinuses with warm, mildly salty water can have the same decongesting/ disinfecting/ soothing effects (provided they're not too clogged with mucous to let the water pass through). Keep your hands to yourself (this is how infections are most readily spread) and lay low. If you feel cold at night, get up and eat a piece of cheese or some nuts (the oil will slowly fuel your body and keep you warm while you sleep). Most importantly, stay hydrated (no caffeine!).

• The way i remember it is feed a cold but starve a flu. Flu causes nausea, and you need energy to get over a cold so eat soup, hot foods, and cold liquids.
  when your under the weather you always need nutrients and fluids!

• I've always found that if you freeze a fever and heat a cold, as in hot or cold showers, it works out pretty well. If I'm sick with a cold I'll stand in a hot shower and take in the steam. It realy clears the the nasal cavity.
  And as for fevers, well a luke warm bath always helps me.

Regardless of medical reasons the adage feed a cold-starve a fever was lexically designed to help remember the proposed eating pattern for each sickness...d in feed-cold and v in starve-fever.

+* I agree with the furnace analogy and if you want to test this, try this: After a meal, (2-3 hours) get a sugar filled cookie of your choice (probably most anything with simple sugar will work), locate yourself in a comfortable room and in a relaxed position, take your temperature with a digital thermometer, and also just feel (sense) what your body and temperature are like. Now eat a sugar filled cookie (your choice). You should begin to feel your temperature rise within the first few minutes; you might even break a slight sweat. Measure your temperature each minute for the next 10 minutes… I think you will find that your body quickly goes to work converting this cookie into energy and that process raises your temperature… if not measurable at least in some part you may sense. Now it just seems logical that at a time that we are trying to reduce our temperature taking cold showers and baths, and medications that reduce fever… stoking the body's furnace with simple sugars is not very smart. I go with starve a fever. Of course I do not mean to not eat at all, but understanding the concept you might better choose what you eat to minimize the effect.

First answer by Chris. Last edit by Blackice111. Contributor trust: 1 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 212 [recommend question]