KEEP MORE THAN VAMPIRES AWAY

By Sarah Baird

Every few years, there’s another ultrahyped superfood on the market ready and able to save us from the repercussions of too many late nights or couch snacks.

The Brazilian acai berry swooped into the spotlight in the mid-2010s with its nutrient-dense, antioxidant-rich pulp that can help reduce cholesterol and increase brain functioning. It was touted by everyone from Oprah to local pharmacists.

Turmeric—a staple ingredient in curries—recently took its turn as an Instagraminfluencer favorite thanks to its powerful anti-inflammatory effects and potential to lower the risk for heart disease. From golden milk (a traditional Indian drink that combines turmeric, coconut milk, spices and a sweetener) to spicy chickpea stews, this healthful member of the ginger family radiated a sunset-colored hue across all social media channels for a spell.

But even if you’ve never dabbled in superfood favorites like chia seeds, breadfruit and ancient grains, you’re probably using one of the oldest and intensely studied superfoods already. And it’s not a mystery fruit from a faraway land (at least not anymore); it’s a centuries-old, good-for-you ingredient in dishes that regularly grace our tables. In everything from Bolognese to roast chicken, you’ll find garlic.

A go-to curative in Egyptian, Indian and Chinese cultures for over 2,000 years, healers across the globe have treated pungent garlic bulbs as a kind of cure-all pharmacy crammed into a tiny package. Since it was first cultivated in Middle Asia, garlic quickly became called upon to help with everything from balance and endurance (Egyptians) to skin diseases and rheumatism (Indians) to ulcers and spider bites (Slavic cultures).

“Pliny, [the] ancient Roman naturalist and physician, listed 61 diseases that could be effectively treated with garlic,” writes Dr. Paavo Airola in 1983’s The Miracle of Garlic. “He said, ‘Garlic has such powerful properties that the very smell of it drives away serpents and scorpions.’ Pliny [also] claimed that garlic has curative power in all respiratory and tubercular ailments.”

In the United States, the national awakening to garlic as not only a pungent ingredient, but a boon for the body, ran in tandem with the environmentally conscious “back to the land” movement of the 1970s, when health food stores became more than just one-off

anomalies in major cities and organic produce began to find its way into shoppers’ recyclable tote bags en masse. Books and pamphlets—many with funky cover art and titles like The Garlic Book: Nature’s Powerful Healer—helped add a new dimension to a familiar food and encouraged the late 20th-century rise in consumers hungry to learn more about the connection between what we eat and how we feel. The curious experimented with drinking garlic juice shots; garlic in pill form was introduced as a dietary supplement; and there was even— briefly—an entire fad diet centered around garlic and other superfoods known as the “Airola optimum diet.”

But there’s no need to take an ingredient as delicious and fundamental to modern cuisine as garlic and remove all the fun from it by ingesting a pill or treating it as a mealtime health requirement. While you’re perusing this head-to-toe list of ways—both current and ancient—garlic has been used as a preventive measure or curative treatment, pat yourself on the back for every just-one-more garlic knot or extra clove in your barbecue shrimp. You were taking care of your health and didn’t even know it! (And, of course, if you’re thinking about adding garlic to your diet as a health aid, make sure to chat with your doctor first.)

HEAD

There’s no lack of recent studies about how good garlic is for you—between 1998 and 2008 alone, there were over 1,000—and many of them focus on the ways in which this odorous ingredient can help protect and support our brains. A 2018 study from scientists at the University of Louisville found that consuming raw garlic could slow the effects of age-related memory loss, particularly in elderly patients with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s diseases.

“Our findings suggest that dietary administration of garlic containing allyl sulfide could help maintain healthy gut microorganisms and improve cognitive health in the elderly,” writes co-lead researcher Dr. Jyotirmaya Behera.

The organosulfur compounds found in garlic have been identified as effective in destroying glioblastomas, a type of deadly brain cancer. And on the mental health side of things, garlic has been considered a tool for assisting in the treatment of depression in China for thousands of years.

SKIN

Snakebites are probably less of a problem for us than they were for the ancient Greeks, but in a pinch it might be useful to know that they swore by garlic as a curative for this extreme injury. (They also used garlic for ulcers and skin crusts, and the Chinese used it to treat leprosy.) More common to our modern era, many people consume garlic to fight off acne, thanks to its antiinflammatory and anti-microbial properties, and the Farmers' Almanac even suggests using antifungal garlic skin to treat athlete’s foot.

HEART

The positive impact garlic has on the health of our tickers is—dare I say—heartening.

Garlic has been proven to be a key ingredient in preventing (or even reversing) high blood pressure, with one major study finding that garlic supplements lowered blood pressure and reduced the risk of heart disease by between 16 and 40 percent. What’s more, garlic has been shown to help reduce cholesterol in patients, with 44 percent of clinical trials since 1993 indicating a reduction in the ability of harmful platelets to aggregate and in the total cholesterol for garlic-eaters.

STOMACH AND INTESTINE

Most Americans aren’t dealing with intestinal parasites in the year 2021, but if we were, we could take the advice of Assyrians, who swear by garlic as a means of curing such ailments. Many experts in the health food world swore by garlic’s ability to aid digestion and absorption of nutrients like calcium and magnesium.

BONES, JOINTS & MUSCLES

If your joints are prone to creaks and aches, garlic should be part of your natural remedy tool kit. Research from a 2018 trial shows that taking a garlic supplement for 12 weeks helped reduce pain severity for those with degenerative joint damage in their knees. And a recent study in mice (no human trial yet, alas) has proven that garlic can also increase estrogen in females, leading to greater bone strength and, potentially, reduced risk of osteoporosis.

PREVENTIVE CARE

Achoo no more! A recent lab study has shown that people who consume garlic from November through February have fewer instances of the common cold than people who don’t, thanks to the bulb’s immunity boosting power. This makes scientific good on similar old wives’ tales from grannies across the Ozarks and Appalachian Mountains who have sworn by garlic as a winter-time remedy for centuries.

And in the Greco-Roman era, garlic was always being doled out ahead of major events: before going into battle to preserve strength, as a way to stave off seasickness and even as an aphrodisiac for those in need on their wedding nights.

Truly, is there anything garlic can’t do?

Sarah Baird is the author of multiple books including New Orleans Cocktails and Flask, which was released in summer 2019. A 2019 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, her work has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Saveur, Eater, Food & Wine and The Guardian, among others. Previously, she served as restaurant critic for the New Orleans alt-weekly, Gambit Weekly, where she won Critic of the Year in 2015 for her dining reviews.