Garlic: Everything You Need To Know
You can’t fully enjoy an Italian spaghetti dinner without indulging in a large slice of flavorful and mouth-watering garlic bread. Or perhaps rubbing garlic butter on a juicy steak, sizzling shrimp, noodles, or even on mushrooms to add zingy flavor? Garlic: everything you need to know!
Garlic not only has a powerful flavor but also a strong odor. Let’s not get started with the breath it can leave you with. Did you know that garlic can serve many purposes besides enjoying eating them?
It’s even believed among scholars that slaves were given garlic for extra endurance and strength, while they were building the pyramids of Egypt.
Many ancient civilizations ate garlic just before heading out to battle, as they too felt that it would give them a better fighting chance.
It was like an ancient steroid or body enhancing drug. Let’s take a closer at garlic and everything you need to know about it.
Garlic: Everything You Need to Know & the Many Health Benefits
Helps with Cholesterol/Heart Disease
In a handful of studies, garlic has been shown to help lower cholesterol, though some would argue only minimally. Patients that suffer from high blood pressure have found that garlic helps lower their C-reactive protein levels, which elevates hypertension in their blood flow.
From poor cholesterol mixed with high blood pressure, many of these patients suffer from heart disease. Garlic is supposed to help fight and prevent heart disease to some degree.
Full of Vitamins
Garlic is full of vitamins and minerals, including vitamin C, B6, manganese, copper, potassium, and iron. It’s also low in calories, which makes it even better.
Maintains a Healthy Immune System
Having a strong and healthy immune system is important so that you stay healthy. That’s especially true for children and older individuals. Garlic has been proven to help stimulate white blood cells by elevating their glutathione levels. It then helps fight infections alongside those white blood cells.
Garlic: Everything You Need to Know, Cancer-Fighting
Do you know anyone that is battling cancer? If you do, you’ll want to share this information with them. Garlic has been found to be one of several vegetables that helps aid your body against numerous types of cancer.
Consuming garlic has been found to help slow the growth rates of cancer cells in cancer patients. That’s because it contains allyl sulfides, which are an anti-inflammatory that helps kick cancer’s butt.
Helps You Lose Weight
It’s been proven that garlic helps boost your metabolism, helping you to lose weight faster. It’s also an appetite suppressant that keeps you from overeating. It helps burn belly fat by detoxing the body.
Garlic: Everything You Need to Know About Other Remedies
Fights Athlete’s Foot
Garlic is an antifungal that can help you clear up your athlete’s foot. Here’s how to make a garlic paste for athlete’s foot.
Calms and Soothes Skin
Have you ever had skin that has broken out with irritating rashes before? People have found that using garlic, which works like an antimicrobial, can actually help with your broken out skin.
It’s not a good idea to apply raw garlic directly on to your skin if your skin is healthy. Doing so may cause an allergic reaction, a burn, or a rash.
Calms You! Tea, Please!
While you may never have considered making a garlic tea before, it’s a real thing. The tea will not only calm you and help you sleep better, but also helps fight a cold that you might have.
Combats Colds and Flu
Garlic can help boost your immune system to fight off common colds and flu-like symptoms. It helps reduce the number of days that you are sick too.
Anti-Aging Effects
All of us older people are sold on this one. Who wouldn’t love to look 15 years younger? Long term garlic therapy has proven to help make you look younger.
Other Household Uses
Garlic even helps to ward off those annoying mosquitos by simply creating a garlic repellent. You can use it to get rid of acne and treats it cold sores.
If you’re crafty enough, garlic can even be used as a glue, or to repair cracks in the glass.
Finding the Right Garlic
While there are hundreds of varieties of garlic, they can be broken down into two categories; soft-neck and hard neck. Softneck garlic has a milder flavor with more cloves.
Hardneck garlic may have fewer cloves, but they’re bigger, and peel much easier.
If you’re wanting to store your garlic for a while, it’s best to get the ones that are hard and dry. These are usually the soft-neck ones that most stores prefer to carry over the hard neck.
Foods that Contain Garlic
Since you’ve discovered that garlic can provide an extra boost to your health in a number of ways, you might want to know more ways that you can enjoy garlic in your meals instead of ingesting a raw garlic clove.
Here are several recipes and dishes that contain garlic so that you can get a healthy intake of it on a more regular basis.
Word of Caution
While garlic has many health benefits for most people, there are certain people that should not ingest it if their situation matches any of these people.
It’s not the best idea to eat anything containing garlic before any type of medical operation or surgery. People that have severe asthma should not ingest garlic, as it may cause side-effects.
It’s also not in your best interest to consume more than 2-3 garlic cloves on a daily basis. This can lead to an upset stomach, diarrhea, vomiting, or even a stinging feeling in your skin from eating too much.
Final Word
So, as you can see, garlic can help improve your life in many ways that you may not have known about before. Which of these health benefits were you most surprised that garlic could help with? What other health benefits have you discovered that pertain to garlic? May God bless this world, Linda.
“All of us older people are sold on this one. Who wouldn’t love to look 15 years younger? Long term garlic therapy has proven to help make you look younger.” — that is because no one can get close enough to see our wrinkles!! LOL!
“Garlic even helps to ward off those annoying mosquitos by simply creating a garlic repellent. ” — miniature vampires!! LOL!
The best pizza I ever had: the crust was pre-baked for 5 minutes in a 500F oven then rubbed with fresh garlic. That garlic was then very finely minced and placed on the crust before the sauce and toppings. OH my – it was so good.
Hi Leanne, oh my gosh, now my mouth is watering to make this pizza! The wrinkles, I have the giggles, you made my day! Linda
And don’t forget that garlic also sends up long flower stalks called scapes (with a lovely curl to them). Cut the scapes while they are still tender, chop them into small pieces (green-bean size or smaller), saute in butter (there *are* other ways but that’s my favorite). Yum. Plus, cutting the scapes makes the plant put more into the underground bulbs, instead of into the flowers.
I’ve had best luck in storing garlic by pickling it. (Storing the bulbs always ended up with them sprouting before winter was over!) Peel the cloves, pack them into canning jars (I use 4- or 8-ounce), fill with hot white vinegar, put on the lids, and wait for them to “ping” as they seal. Keep in a fairly cool place. When you need garlic cloves, scoop them out and rinse–little if any vinegar taste!
And finally, fermented or black garlic. I got 3 bulbs of it at a local craft fair, and fell in love with them so much that I invested in a garlic fermenter (some have done it successfully using a slow cooker on very low for the required 2-3 weeks). The garlic variety I grow, “Music,” comes out very sweet and chewy–I call them my healthy gumdrops!
Hi Rhonda, oh my gosh I LOVE your comment!! It gets me excited to try growing the “Music” variety!! Awesome tips!! Linda
Forgot to mention, about the black garlic. It doesn’t leave you with garlic breath! Big bonus!!
About other varieties to ferment. When I first got my fermenter, I’d already pickled all that summer’s garlic, so I bought some organic grocery store garlic, variety unknown. The result, fermented, had just a hint of sweetness, but was more of an earthy, savory flavor–still good, but in a much different direction, probably would be good for cooking. (I haven’t tried using it that way yet!)
Oh, and the scapes freeze well. I just cut to whatever size and put in freezer bags–haven’t ever bothered blanching, and they taste fine.
Hi Rhonda, this is so awesome to hear about no garlic breath. LOL! I love your tips! Linda
We grow and use a lot of garlic, but in a damp climate it doesn’t keep too well even if you hang it and dry it out. On your recommendation I bought an Excalibur dehydrator, and plan to make garlic powder, but an even better method for us has proved to be freezing. We just peel the fresh cloves, put them in a plastic bag in the freezer. Individual cloves do not stick together, and they are ready to use any time. The oil in the cloves prevents them from freezing hard, so when you pull them out of the freezer they have a cheese-like consistency when cut, and can be very thinly sliced or chopped. They retain all of their flavor this way.
Hi Trevor, I love freezing onions, I will have to try freezing my garlic. Great tip! Linda