How To Eat Garlic & Onion

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How To Eat Garlic & Onion

23 Dec 2019

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Dr Greger's videos helped me understand how to eat garlic (and onion) — members of the allium family that also includes red onion, green onion (scallion), leeks and chives. Here are some guidelines I developed for myself:

How much garlic to consume? About 1/4 tsp per day. See Benefits of Garlic Powder for Heart Disease (2019, 3 mins). What does that mean in terms of fresh garlic cloves? Maybe 2-4 per day? Don't know.

Should we eat garlic (and onions) raw? Yes! See Inhibiting Platelet Activation with Garlic & Onions (2020, 5 mins) or How To Use Garlic Preserving Its Anti-Cancer Effects?

If we wish to cook garlic (or onion), should we crush garlic (or onion) and wait for 10 mins? Yes. See Inhibiting Platelet Activation with Garlic & Onions (2020, 5 mins) or How To Use Garlic Preserving Its Anti-Cancer Effects? An excerpt from this article:

The secret to maintaining the anti-cancer effects of garlic is to either eat it raw (think salsa, homemade dressings, pesto, etc) or crush the garlic first, wait 10 minutes, and then cook it.

You know those chemical flares? You bend them, two chemicals mix and a light-emitting reaction takes place? The same kind of thing happens in garlic. Floating around in the cytoplasm of garlic cells is a compound called alliin and packed away in tiny intracellular storage compartments (called vacuoles) is an enzyme called alliinase. When the garlic tissues are crushed, the two mix and alliinase turns alliin into allicin, the phytonutrient thought to be responsible for many of garlic’s health benefits. Cooking destroys the enzyme, though, so even if you crush your garlic, if it’s thrown immediately into the pan, little allicin may be produced.

Allicin is relatively heat stable, though, so if you chop your garlic and wait 10 minutes for the allicin to be formed, you can then cook it (the enzyme has already done its work) and presumably maintain many of the benefits.

A similar reaction happens in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli!

How are alliums and cruciferous similar? In both, we need a chemical reaction between two chemicals in the veggie to produce a magical compound. Allicin is produced in alliums; sulforaphane is produced in cruciferous. In both cases, if we eat the veggie raw, the reaction takes place in our mouths while chewing. However, if we first heat the veggie and then eat it, the magical compound is not produced! Luckily, if we finely chop or crush the veggie in a blender and just let it lie around for a few minutes, the chemical reaction does take place and the magical compound is produced. For alliums, Dr Greger recommends about 10 minutes to produce allicin. For broccoli (cruciferous family), Dr Greger recommends 30 minutes to produce sulforaphane. For fascinating details, please see Broccoli Sprouts and Daily Cruciferous Intake: How To?

How long should we cook garlic? At offset 4:12 of this video, Dr Greger shows the table below explaining that the concentration of allicin drops quite rapidly with cooking time! ChG means 'Chopped Garlic'.

The table above motivates me to consume garlic in its raw form as much as possible, without cooking.

Is there some garlic that's not as pungent and strong as regular garlic? Yes. Elephant garlic. Just like shallots and leeks are milder versions of onions, elephant garlic is a milder version of regular garlic. Elephant garlic has less 'total phenolic content' and 'antioxidant activity' than regular garlic, as explained by Dr Greger in this video but we may compensate for that loss by adding a little extra elephant garlic in our meals!

What happens if we boil, stir-fry, roast, pickle or "blacken" garlic? At offset 4:12 of this video, the following table is discussed:

The table shows that raw garlic is best! What about black garlic? Black garlic is a type of aged garlic made by heating whole bulbs of garlic over the course of several weeks, a process that results in black cloves. Very tasty! But as Dr Greger points out, the amount of allicin (the active compound in garlic that's believed to be helpful) reduces to very small quantities. Considering this data, I stopped buying black garlic.

Red vs yellow vs white onions: This video explains:

… yellow onions in general have more antioxidants than white. And red onions beat them both, based on three different antioxidant testing methods. That's why I always try to buy red. Though red onions are indeed slightly better, yellow or white onions are no slouches, containing considerable levels of antioxidant activity.

Outer layers vs inner layers of onion: This video explains:

… antioxidants are concentrated in the outer layers immediately under the papery peel. Unfortunately, most consumers discard these most nutrient-rich outermost layers, thus losing a valuable part. Here are some numbers. Look at that! More than 10 times more antioxidants in the outer layer of white onions, compared to the core.

Should we stop eating alliums before surgery? Why? See Inhibiting Platelet Activation with Garlic & Onions (5 mins, 2020) for details.

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