Garlic – the Amazing Bulb!
We all love the smell of fresh pasta sauce or pizza, wafting from an Italian restaurant. The roasted garlic is distinctive and hard to miss and even harder to resist. Besides being a staple flavor for delicious cuisines, garlic has so much more to offer than a yummy taste.
Let’s get into why this super ingredient is so special and how to make sure you benefit from using garlic, the miracle plant.
What is Garlic?
Garlic is widely recognized for its many health benefits and especially the amazing flavour it adds to most savoury foods. It’s also the white, edible bulb from a plant in the lily family that’s been traditionally used for health purposes all around the world, by the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, and Japanese. The medicinal potency of garlic has been widely known and used for over 5000 years. During World War II, garlic was applied to the wounds of soldiers for its antimicrobial effects.
The active component of garlic has the ability to fight bacteria, viruses, fungi, and even parasites due to its antibiotic properties. Let’s learn more about it.
What’s Allicin and Why Should You Eat It?
Allicin is the main compound found in garlic, which is created when two other chemicals combine during preparation.
Allicin helps:
🧄boost your body's immune system
🧄reduce high blood pressure and cholesterol levels
🧄prevention of cancer
🧄prevent Alzheimer's and dementia
🧄improve athletic performance
NOTE: it’s not as simple as just cooking with garlic any old way you want. Keep reading to learn the trick to getting as many health perks from this one ingredient.
Garlic and Cancer
According to studies, there’s ample proof that components inside garlic prevent and eradicate cancer cells. Of the numerous health benefits of garlic, the anticancer effect is probably the most noticeable. Observations over the past years have shown that the consumption of garlic in the diet provides strong protection against cancer risk. Some components of garlic are likely to play vital roles in the selective killing of cancer cells.
Is There a Specific Amount of Garlic Needed to Benefit?
As a health nutritionist, I’m often asked about how much garlic is best to eat, but in all truth, there’s no exact calculation for a recommendation. We know there are so many reasons to make sure you’re ingesting it everyday… but what quantities are safe and effective?
Most studies prove that 1 -2 cloves daily is a balanced amount that ensures healthy effects. Some people take powdered or liquid garlic supplements in pill form, but research has proven that you won’t get the full features of allicin that way.
How To Use Garlic the Right Way
By now you know how amazing garlic is for you and you’re probably determined to get the most out of it when planning your meals. There’s a simple trick to getting your garlic to release allicin: don’t cook your garlic whole and be sure to give it time after crushing it - let it sit for 10 minutes.
If you're throwing whole cloves in with roast veggies or burning your garlic to a crisp, you're going to miss out on this important phytonutrient. All you have to do is crush, chop, smash, or press it before use. This creates the bioactive compound that’s responsible for health benefits. By crushing the garlic, you start the chemical reaction that makes allicin which doesn't exist in the whole cloves since it's only formed when the molecule alliin and the enzyme alliinase combine.
But once your garlic is smashed, you have leave it be!
Let it sit for about 10 minutes while you prep your other ingredients. You must allow enough time for allicin to form before making contact with heat. There’s a Journal of Nutrition study that found the alliinase enzyme loses its properties within a minute of cooking.
Plus, the true flavour really opens up this way. So, it’s a win-win.
Anti-Inflammatory Recipes
If you’re looking for inspiration to cook with garlic this week, look no further than my Meals that Heal Cookbook. It includes 20 recipes from savoury to sweet and many which use garlic. Download your copy for FREE here.
Happy, healthy eating!
