You may know garlic is a great anti-microbial, perhaps you also know its anti-cancer, antioxidant, blood pressure lowering, anti-blood coagulating and lipid lowering?
Maybe you’re already adding it to your cooking, saturating your winter fare with it’s medicinal properties or even going the extra mile and eating it raw for best effect?
WAIT, WHAT! You have to eat it RAW?!!??
We used to think so- at college we were taught that allicin (the biologically active ingredient) is very susceptible to temperature and breaks down after a period of time (meaning the convenient jars of prepared chopped garlic were helpful for flavour but had no medicinal effect). Therefore for worming, bacterial infections, help with coughs and colds and for all the reasons above we recommended it be consumed raw.
Hmmmm. Easy for some, for others with less of a garlic tolerance shall we say this normally threw up some road blocks in getting them to eat their medicine.
Fortunately research has now shown that when garlic is chopped or crushed and left to sit for 10mins, Allicin develops and then isn’t destroyed by heating. Doing this means the beneficial properties remain even after cooking!
You are still more than welcome to eat your garlic raw if you like it, whizz it up raw in your pesto, and Baba ghanoush but you don’t HAVE to anymore. For those to whom this is good news- you’re welcome.