The Greatness of Garlic

Garlic has earned a reputation for giving its consumers the notorious “garlic breath” but luckily, its salubrious qualities have also given it much deserved renown. According to Dr. Schwarcz, garlic’s salubrious reputation dates way back to the ancient Egyptians, who fed garlic to their slaves to keep them healthy, and the Greeks, who believed that it opened obstructions in the body. Modern studies have credited garlic with neutralyzing carcinogens, preventing heart disease, enhancing the immune system, and also increasing resistance to cancer; in fact, Dr. Schwarcz writes that according to a study,

…consuming an average of six or more cloves a week lowered the risk of colorectal cancer by 30 percent and stomach cancer by 50 percent when compared with the consumption of less than one clove per week. (116)

Garlic’s protean flairs vary depending on how it is consumed: heated, dried, fresh, etc., but garlic owes its medicinal fame to a single compound allicin, which gives off the various health benefits—as well as the pungent odor.
If this is not enough incentive to go eat some garlic, here’s one more: garlic is also an aphrodisiac, so powerful that according to Garlic Central,

Tibetan monks were forbidden from entering the monastries if they had eaten garlic.

Now, perhaps eating some garlic is worth the garlic breath.