Garlic can add a zing to any meal. It may make your breath smell funny, but that’s a small price to pay for all the benefits that garlic can offer. Below are three great reasons to eat more garlic.
Garlic is incredibly versatile
Garlic pairs well with many different foods from seafood to potatoes. It’s a key ingredient in Italian and French cuisine - if you want to put a European spin on a dish, throw in some garlic. It has also been widely adopted in many modern Asian dishes, helping to add to the cocktail of spices.
A few popular dishes that you can incorporate garlic into include:
Garlic bread
Spaghetti bolognese
Linguine with shrimp
Lemon and garlic roast chicken
Chicken tikka masala
Garlic vegetable stir fry
Garlic-infused spinach
Garlic soup
Garlic butter is used in many dishes - sometimes as part of a sauce and sometimes as a dip. This garlic butter recipe shows just how easy it is to make your own garlic butter. Some people like to add herbs such as parsley and tarragon to give it an added kick.
You can also incorporate garlic into salsa, guacamole or even salad dressing. This could be raw or cooked - raw garlic tends to be healthier, but will also produce more of a kick.
If you’re feeling experimental, you could even try adding garlic to a smoothie. There are even recipes out there for garlic ice cream if you want to go all out.
Garlic has many health benefits
Part of the reason the meditteranean diet is heralded so much as being healthy (despite containing lots of cheese and bread) is because it contains a lot of garlic. This pungent vegetable is a superfood and studies have found that it has all manner of health benefits.
For example, garlic can reduce your body’s cholesterol levels and reduce high blood pressure. As a result, garlic is great for preventing heart disease, which is often caused by high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. If you suffer from hypertension, garlic could be a great food to work into your diet.
Garlic is also packed full of antioxidants that can help boost your immune system. If you want to fight away colds and flus in the winter months, garlic is the perfect ingredient for doing so. In fact, there are some people that treat garlic cloves much like health supplements for this reason.
Another great health benefit to garlic is its anti-inflammatory properties. If you suffer from arthritis, you could find that a garlic-rich diet reduces the pain and discomfort ordinarily caused by inflamed joints. If you suffer from acne, you could meanwhile see a reduction in redness and spot breakouts just from eating more garlic.
There are even claims that garlic can reduce the risk of developing cancer or alzheimers (although more scientific evidence is needed to prove these). Some athletes also swear by garlic as a performance enhancer (there is limited scientific evidence to back up this claim - however it would make sense given its positive effect on inflammation and heart health).
Yes, it may not be the ideal remedy for bad breath. However, you can usually cover up the scent of garlic by consuming mint, green tea or apples after having a garlic dish.
Garlic keeps mosquitoes away
There may be some truth to the idea that garlic can scare away vampires. After all, it seems to work against other bloodsuckers - garlic is toxic to mosquitoes. It is sometimes incorporated into bug sprays as a result of this.
Can ingesting garlic also work? While further scientific research is needed, there is logic behind that idea that eating garlic can stop you getting bitten by mosquitoes - the smell of garlic in your breath and in your blood may be enough to ward them off. If you’re often bitten by bugs, it’s certainly worth a try as a remedy.
Many other bugs also don’t like the scent of garlic and find it toxic. For this reason, it is commonly used as an organic pesticide in gardening. Growing a garlic plant in your yard may also help to deter bugs from eating away nearby plants. This could be a great reason to start growing your own homemade garlic.
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