Call me antisocial.
But sometimes you have to put feeling good first and shrug off what other people might say.
And when we’re talking about:
- Cutting colds by 63%
- Shortening the duration of any cold you do catch by 70%
- Reducing high blood pressure
- Reducing LDL (“bad”) cholesterol
- Protecting against cell damage and aging, and
- Detoxifying from heavy metals[1]
The health benefits far outweigh the smirks.
This super-powerful health booster was the earliest known performance enhancer, administered to the original Olympic athletes in ancient Greece.[2] It was prescribed by the father of medicine Hippocrates for a range of illnesses, and Chinese medicine has relied on it for 3,000 years. British soldiers even rubbed it on wounds during the First World War.
You won’t meet a gummy vitamin with those credentials.
It won’t wreck your budget, at about 50 cents a week. You can find it anywhere. AND it repels vampires to boot. Always useful in the case of an undead invasion.
It’s raw garlic.
With the emphasis on raw.
Yeah, whatever. You work in a job where you deal with people all day, you hate the taste, and you couldn’t imagine swallowing it raw. What’s your health worth to you?
Imagine a winter spent without getting a single cold. Needing less medication. Living longer. Feeling better.
Garlic does more for your health than any single supplement or vitamin pill out there. Anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory, cancer-fighting … what more do you want?
Oh, you want people to like you?
Might be a problem.
I’ll never forget my first garlic rejection. I was in college, and a group of us went to an Italian restaurant for a nosh up. It was a fabulous evening … until my boyfriend dropped me off home. He got out of the car, stood alongside as I got my things, and then gave me a nice hug. He refused to kiss me.
Whether it was his breath or mine he was worried about, I’m still not sure.
But from that moment on, I vowed never to allow passion to be dampened by culinary delicacies.
If my loved one is eating garlic, then I eat it, too. And if I’m eating garlic, he has to indulge. That way, we won’t even notice garlic breath on one another. We’ll be too busy savoring the moment.
Garlic works. I’m usually the one who catches everything, but these days I bump up my garlic intake when I feel like a cold might be coming on. Sniffles are a thing of the past.
Plus, it’s addictive. The more garlic you eat, the more you want to eat. I crush it with the flat blade of a butcher’s knife, mince it fine, and sprinkle it over a green salad, baked potato, or pizza. I mash it up with avocado and lime. There’s not much it doesn’t go with.
If I cook with it, I’m resigned to the fact that it’s acting as a flavoring rather than a miracle health booster. Heating garlic kills many of its healthful properties.
If you must cook it, crush it at room temperature and leave for at least 10 minutes before adding to your soup or stir-fry. Wait to toss it in until the last few minutes of cooking time, to maximize your chances of preserving the active component allicin.
There are alternatives to fresh garlic. Garlic salt, that minced stuff in jars, frozen cubes, and ever-popular garlic pills. Get all the benefits without the mess or the breath.
But look at that clove. Surely Nature was onto something when she designed it in the perfect pill shape.
There’s no evidence that garlic alternatives work as well as the fresh stuff. Considering they cost a whole lot more, they’re not worth the space on my spice cupboard shelf.
Garlic doesn’t have the same cool factor as gummy vitamins. Maybe it’s harder to get your kids to eat. But if the Egyptians could build the pyramids on a diet of garlic (along with beer and bread),[3] imagine what you could do.
And if your garlic breath scares folks away, you’re in luck. No more people breathing cold germs in your face. An extra immune boost right there.
[1] https://authoritynutrition.com/11-proven-health-benefits-of-garlic/
[2] http://jn.nutrition.org/content/131/3/951S.abstract
[3] http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-04-25/news/9304250206_1_tombs-zahi-hawass-great-pyramids
Let us know what you think!