Best Way to Eat Garlic to Retain Its Medicinal Value

 Dear Dr Lim JB

My wife intends to make her own garlic and ginger sauce which she thinks is healthier than buying ready-made ones from the super markets.

She reads a lot of your various articles in your blog often, sharing with me. She is asking me to find out from you what is the best way to retain the medicinal value of garlic if she makes her own garlic and ginger sauce and how best should garlic be eaten as you are also a research nutritionist and food scientist from your CV on the right. You would be the most qualified person to answer.

Sorry for your precious time, but I hope you would not mind

Thanks a lot

W. Parker

I receive a question from a gentleman here posted in the comment section below this article:

“The Elixir for Eternal Life”

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-elixir-for-eternal-life.html?showComment=1660996545152#c4439152436355336025

He was asking about the medicinal values of garlic and how best to prepare and consume them in the form of a sauce?

Here’s my answer to Mr. Parker.

Thank you for your question Mr. Parker.

Here are some suggestions on how garlic ought to be eaten. But first, let’s look at some of the bioactive principles and medicinal values in garlic.

The major bio-active principles in garlic (Allium sativum) are its organo-sulphur compounds, such as diallyl thiosulfonate (allicin), diallyl sulphide, diallyl disulphide, diallyl trisulfide, S-allyl-cysteine, and S-allyl-cysteine sulphur oxide (alliin). Probably one of the most important is ajoene.

However, I remember in 1964 (58 years ago) when I was still a postgraduate student in London, one of my professors there was telling us they did a study on some 20 different brands of garlic pills from all over the world, and what they found was, ajoene in garlic was not present in any of the pill. Probably they were destroyed during the processing when garlic were made into pills?

But I am not sure if other bioactive sulphur compounds like alliin and allicin were absent. We were also told the pharmacopeial dose of garlic was 4 gm daily.

Another bioactive compound in raw garlic is allicin. The original alliin is converted into allicin when the enzyme alliinase is activated by chopping up or crushing the garlic.  

Similarly, other organo-sulphur compounds in garlic are also activated when the garlic is crushed. It will then release the enzymes that will in turn liberate these sulphur compounds to give garlic the pungent smell and chilli-hot taste and their medicinal values.

However, if garlic is boiled, cooked or fried, the enzymes are destroyed. Not only are the enzymes destroyed, but the medicinal properties of these sulphur compounds themselves are destroyed. Both are damaged even before the boiling point of water at 100 degrees Celsius. That is why garlic loses its taste and pungent smell when cooked.

However, sometimes cooking vegetables other than garlic lightly in hot water for a short period such as blanching them in hot water for 2 minutes increase their nutritive value by inactivating the enzymes that destroy the vitamins in them. One example is ascorbinase that destroys vitamin C. Blanching vegetables may also preserve the colour, flavour and texture of the vegetables besides preserving their nutritional value. But in this case, blanching garlic may not be advisable.

In short, it is far better to eat crushed garlic raw, rather than cook them. It would be advisable to use crushed garlic without cooking them to prepare garlic sauce probably with olive oil, a little salt and some apple cider vinegar added if desired. The garlic and ginger may be macerated in a blender.

Try not to consume too much salt to avoid hypertension and other cardiovascular diseases. The recommended salt intake is just 4 g. per day.

This applies also to the ginger if garlic-ginger sauce is what was intended.

On the question of the medicinal value of garlic, it has been shown to have anti-cancer properties provided again it is crushed or chewed and not swallowed whole. This is because alliin itself in garlic has no anticancer properties unless it is converted into allicin which then plays a major role in their antiproliferative effect in cancer. Nutrition scientists think this effect may be credited to the ability of allicin to briefly deplete the intracellular gluthathione (GSH) level.

The level of the decline in GSH levels correlated well with the growth inhibitory activity of allicin, thus demonstrating its anticancer values if consumed raw in a crushed state. Allyl sulphur compounds are important antitumorigenic agents, and diallyl disulphide reduces the size of cancer growth.

In laboratory studies, garlic intake may reduce the risk of colon cancer because diallyl disulphide inhibits the growth of neoplastic CMT-13 cells and of N-acetytransferase activity in human colon adenocarcinoma cell line. Additionally, it was demonstrated diallyl sulphide is an active inhibitor that promotes phase of 9,10-dimethyl-1,2- benzanthracene induced skin tumours in the mouse.

Other therapeutic uses of garlic are for conditions linked to the cardiovascular system, including atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), high cholesterol, heart attack, coronary heart disease, and hypertension.

Garlic has been used for the prevention of various cancers, among them for lung, prostate, breast, stomach, rectal and colon cancers.

The effective pharmacological doses of garlic surprisingly are quite small. It has been suggested that only 2 to 5 g of fresh raw garlic or 0.4 to 1.2 g of dried garlic powder is sufficient for its anti-cancer and antithrombotic properties.

Since the effective pharmacological dose of garlic is 4 gm a day as mentioned earlier, 30 cloves of garlic were then weighed. A head or whole bulb of garlic will have about 10 lobes, each lobe is called a clove.

Weighing each clove of garlic individually, and the whole bulb collectively, it has an average reading of 7.3 gm per clove. This surprisingly means that by chewing just one clove of raw garlic is sufficient to impart all their medicinal properties

I hope I have answered.

Jb lim