Why Garlic Is Good For You

Garlic is a member of the Allium genus of plants, which includes onions, leeks, and chives. Rich in organic sulfur compounds and flavonols (a class of antioxidants), onions and garlic have been used for thousands of years¹ in Egypt, China, India and Greece to cover wounds and treat a wide range of health conditions, from heart disease to parasitic infections.

Garlic is packed with valuable nutrients, including 10 different natural sugars, 17 amino acids, and several enzymes and minerals. It is an esepcially rich source of adenosine, an essential building block of the nucleic acids DNA and RNA. It's also rich in organic sulfur compounds, such as allicin. Allicin is not present in the garlic bulb you bring home from the supermarket or dig out of your garden. Instead, the plant makes it in response to injury when you cut or crush the bulb.

The importance of dietary sulfur

Proteins provide structural support to cells in the body. They also exist in the form of enzymes, which are necessary for the zillions of biochemical reactions that occur inside our cells every minute of the day. Nucleic acids dictate the sequence of amino acids that link together to form these proteins.

Proteins can be thousands of amino acids in length. These long strands fold into the unique shapes that make them perfect for the tasks they perform in our daily lives. Sulfur atoms inside some of the amino acids form strong internal, disulphide bonds that help to stabilize these unwieldy chains into place.

You can see that, without the sulfur in garlic, our cells would fall apart from a lack of structural support and our enzymes would flop around all over the place. We wouldn’t be able to digest food, think, move or pee.

Garlic: Puerto Rico's secret sauce

Reporting in the July 2019 issue of the journal Nutrition and Cancer, ²scientists say that eating onions and garlic may offer some protection against breast cancer. They studied the diets of women in Puerto Rico, which has low rates of the disease, and where the population consumes a significant amount of both bulbous herbs from the Allium genus of plants. Specifically, they eat a lot of a wildly popular condiment called sofrito, which is packed with these two flavorsome ingredients.

Sofrito, so good

This population-based case-control study included 314 women in Puerto Rico between the ages of 30 and 79 with primary, histologically confirmed breast cancer and no previous cancer history and 346 women with no history of cancer apart from non-melanoma skin cancer.

Participants were interviewed to collect demographic data, as well as their medical and reproductive history and family history of cancer. A previously calibrated food frequency questionnaire was administered to assess sofrito consumption. Respondents received a combined score from 0 to 8, depending on the number of times per week they consumed onion or garlic (0 to 4 for each). Sofrito intake was assessed separately.

Scores were categorised as follows:

Respondents who consumed sofrito at least once a day experienced a 67 percent reduction in breast cancer risk compared to those who had never sampled the allium-rich delicacy. These results are consistent with studies in France, Mexico and China.

Sofrito is ridiculously easy to conjure up on your own. All you do is throw a few vegetables and herbs (including onions and garlic, of course!) into a blender or food processor and there you go. You can easily find recipe suggestions online, but soon you’ll be devising your own.

Other reasons to have a garlicky diet

Garlic is also a source of prebiotics⁴, which are necessary to promote the growth of healthy bacteria in the gut. These healthy bacteria assist digestion and support a healthy immune system. Breastfeeding mothers use garlic to boost their milk⁵ supply.