Aug 04 2010
How Healthy Is Garlic?
Garlic
People often say that garlic has medicinal properties. Some claim it lowers blood pressure, others swear it helps cholesterol and reduces clotting, and some even think it protects against cancer. I’ve also heard that garlic is “healthier” 10-15 minutes after it has been crushed or minced. Is any of this true?
The Science of Single Foods
As someone who regularly reads the scientific literature on the health benefits of food I can assure you that this is not an easy question to answer. The problem is that the effect of any single food on human health is likely to be small at best, and small effects are very difficult to detect with reliability. Studies must be incredibly well-designed to contribute anything of value to our understanding of how a food works in the human body. Also, many studies must be taken together in context for the data to be evaluated properly.
I have been researching this garlic question on and off for months and feel only slightly more confident today than I did when I started. To summarize, there are a good number of studies addressing the health value of garlic, but very very few of them are well-designed and published in reputable journals. The problem with having a large number of poor-quality studies is that results are often conflicting and difficult to interpret. Thus, when another scientist comes in to do a meta-analysis (pooling data from many studies and re-analyzing it for stronger statistics) the findings are usually inconclusive.
However, inconclusive findings do not enable me (or anyone) to say there is no benefit. What I can say is that more research is needed and if there is a benefit it is likely to be small. (How unsatisfying is that?!). But personally I would still recommend eating garlic for health. Why?
Small Benefits Are Important
Although we cannot say exactly why garlic is good for you, it is almost certainly not bad for you. Moreover, although it is difficult to attribute a particular health benefit to a single food, we do know that people who eat the most vegetables tend to be healthier than people who fewer.
Many nutrition scientists are beginning to suspect that the benefit of foods like garlic are primarily relevant in the context of a whole diet and cannot be evaluated independently. This means that it is less important that the individual studies I mentioned earlier are inconclusive, because they are likely not sensitive enough to evaluate the complex interactions of whole foods and food combinations on human physiology.
The Best Reason To Eat Garlic
The most important thing you can do for your health is eat a diverse diet of natural, unprocessed foods. Garlic is an amazing ingredient that imparts a unique and wonderful taste to the food it is cooked with. If you like garlic and it encourages you to eat your vegetables, then it’s good for you.
If it makes you feel slightly better knowing that it may help your heart or reduce inflammation, that’s awesome but less important.
What About The Crush?
If you do hope garlic can add to your health, is there any benefit in crushing it early? Probably.
Scientists have long suspected that the active ingredient in garlic is a substance called allicin. A recent study from Queen’s University showed that it is actually a decomposition product of allicin that has the most potent antioxidant activity.
Interestingly, allicin is created from an enzyme called alliinase that is not released from plant cells until they are damaged. Alliinase is what gives garlic (and onions) their strong odor and is thought to be a self-defense mechanism for these plants. When garlic is crushed, alliinase becomes active and begins creating allicin. As allicin is created and breaks down, the antioxidant potential of garlic is dramatically increased. Optimal antioxidant levels are created about 10 minutes after garlic is crushed.
It has not yet been shown that this increased antioxidant activity is a benefit to humans, but the principle is compelling enough to try to remember to crush your garlic a little early. If you are anything like me though, this feat is almost impossible. Apparently garlic hasn’t done that much for my memory.
What are your favorite reasons to eat garlic?
Originally published March 27, 2009.
If you enjoyed this post, you might want to subscribe to Summer Tomato and follow me on Twitter!
Tags: allicin, alliinase, crushed garlic, garlic, minced garlic
Print This
•
Loading ...
Best reason to eat garlic? I propose that the best reason is to fight off Vampires. Vampires hate garlic because it gives them bad breath, and when they bite people they don’t want to have bad breath. Thanks for you view on this though, Darya.
Maybe if they carried mouthwash it would be less of a problem?
I’ve never really been afraid of Vampires. Bring ‘em on!!!!
How interesting. I loved your post and the discussion about how to peel garlic a few months ago, and didn’t really have any idea that the benefits of garlic were more than its wonderful flavor. And who knew there was this much science about garlic.
I LOVE garlic. I eat it almost every day, both cooked and raw. I eat it mainly for the flavor, but when I eat it raw it’s because, for myself, it has proven itself to fight away viruses. If I start to feel a little sick (itchy throat, cough, runny nose, etc…) I eat a few raw cloves of garlic and 98% of the time, the sickness never comes. But as you said Darya, it has to be mixed in with a healthy, varied diet to make a difference on your health. Eating garlic while you are sick and then bingeing on pizza, pasta or ice-cream will not help you.
Isn’t that the beauty of vegetables? That we can get so much from them in so many different ways. You remind me of another difficult thing about large studies, they largely ignore individual variability.
Um, it tastes good.
ditto
And by the way Darya I didn’t mention before how much I love your new place here!! The site is beautiful, and I love the pictures at the top. Who did it for you?
As for the garlic, I had no idea it had so much potential health benefit. I like fresh garlic because it adds so much irreplaceable flavor; but hey, I take the other benefits too!
Thank you Karin! It means a lot to me that you like the new site. I was a little worried some loyal fans would be unhappy with the changes.
I mostly designed the site myself, but I did have a little help from a few wonderful folks.
Thanks for this post- very informative, cuts out all the uber-crunchy dogma of so many vegan-magical witch doctors. Personally I love garlic, and I love knowing that if might be really good for me!
Thanks, I try
My favorite part of your post was the eating diversely thing; I think its so important, and things just go downhill when we don’t have a lot of different things in our diets. Meals will also taste better if things are varied. Curious though, what kind of substitutes for garlic are out there? I mean, even though I like garlic I would like to add something to a stirfry that is like garlic, but not garlic. Like maybe ginger? Could I mince up some ginger and use it like garlic? What other options are out there…..?
Lemongrass comes to mind as an aromatic that could be added in a manner to garlic & ginger – I use all three.
The sound and smell of garlic being chopped on the cutting board = my mom’s kitchen.
I count 47 garlic bulbs in that picture. Any takers?
I do love garlic though. So do Italians. Is there any other type of food that garlic is more associated with than Italian?
From my understanding, Korean food is supposed to have lots of garlic.
I proved myself healthier after three days of taking fresh garlic. No more ‘jerking’ while working up to another floor. It’s amazed me. Any one can try.
I love garlic and eat it mostly because of its flavour. Many of our dishes are being served with yogurt+garlic. It seems that it can make any dish awesome
One old uncle of mine eats raw garlic every day to regulate his blood pressure levels. Back home I used to press 1-2 cloves into a glass of milk, bring it to a boil, put some honey in and drink it when I had a bad, bronchitis like cough. The cough would be gone the other day .. but beware ! Not every garlic tastes the same. I tried the same recipe some years later with local garlic here and it was bad .. very bad.
In my culture, most of the information about health benefits are rooted in tradition. After all, these food items (vegetables, herbs, etc.) are around for some time and scientists in the old days weren’t lying around lazily either
Sure, they didn’t have the technical equipment of today, but followed basic scientific procedures to gain knowledge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_medieval_Islam#Scientific_method). Lately I hear of more and more scientists applying modern methods to verify or falsify these statements.
I find these things fascinating and would love to collect as much knowledge as possible. Hopefully I will be able to make time to study things that interest me so.
I have no fear of vampires. That’s how much I like garlic.