A rigorous formalism for determining the electric dipole polarizability of a three-hadron bound complex in the case that the system has only one bound (ground) state has been elaborated. On its basis, by applying a model wave function that takes into account specific features of the structure of the lightest hypernucleus and using the known low-energy experimental data for the p-n and lambda-d systems as input data, we have calculated the value of the electric dipole polarizability of the lambda hypertriton. It follows from our study that the polarizability of the lambda hypertriton is close to 3 fm^3 exceeding the polarizabilities of the ordinary three-nucleon nuclei by an order of magnitude.