Garlic Passion

Wow! Who would have thought that garlic could be so similar to my other favorite ingredient olive oil? I’m amazed at their similarities. Not that they’re from the same plant groups or anything like that. I mean olives are drupes, like cherries and grapes. Garlic is an allium, like onions. Cherries and onions? Not anything alike. What I mean is that garlic is used as a food, but it also has remarkable health benefits, just like olive oil.

As a food, we wolf down garlic bread, salad dressings with tiny chunks of it, and pesto. It can be eaten raw or cooked, wherever it’s aromatic pungency contributes to the flavor of food. Many eat it pickled the way they do in China or Russia, or stir fried with other veggies. Even the garlic leaves are used in southeast Asian foods.

In the Mediterranean, it’s an understatement to say garlic is a staple. Many people in America associate garlic only with Italian cooking. In Italy, they mix it with olive oil and egg to create a smooth paste called aioli — also popular with vegans because of the rich emollient texture it gives rather spartan vegan entrees. In Greece, a similar garlic dish called skordalia is popular. In Spain, a mixture of almond, olive oil soaked bread, and garlic is called ajoblanco or white garlic.

If you read the history of garlic, you’ll find it’s been a main part of the diet of ancient peoples since the earliest times. The slaves who built Khufu’s pyramid, the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Africans–they all ate garlic. But not just because it was a food source. It was a food source that held a host of benefits.

In Pliny’s famous Natural History, he listed dozens of situations when garlic would cure or prevent disease. Today, we don’t have to read Pliny the Elder to learn how garlic can improve our health. Scientists in virtually every country have been and are researching its effects on the human body from every anatomical standpoint.

Research has shown that, like olive oil, garlic may help prevent heart disease. Many people eat garlic or take garlic supplements on the advice of their doctor in an effort to improve their cholesterol numbers and help control high blood pressure.

A lot of doctors have read the research and take a, “well, it won’t hurt, and it might help” approach. That’s why my dad started eating more garlic. His doctor told him that a National Institute of Health report in February 2007. It couldn’t prove garlic effected cholesterol, but the doc had read other studies that showed it might protect arterial walls from cholesterol sticking.

I’m with the doc on this one. It won’t hurt, and it might help. My parents use olive oil already so adding garlic to the diet is easy. At most, it’s another weapon in the cholesterol war. At least, they’ll have some really good-tasting food.

That’s a win-win situation if I ever heard of one.