Pesticide and Environmental Update
Garlic's
Goodness Best Released With a Crush
By Linda Tokarz
Consuming large amounts of raw garlic may be good for your heart, but
not necessarily your social life. So, how do we best enjoy these pungent
little bulbs, without missing out on their impressive health benefits?
Crush them. Then bake them slightly. That's according to Agricultural
Research Service (ARS) scientists and collaborators in Argentina.
Researchers have known for some time that garlic--like its close
relative, the onion--is a rich source of heart-protective compounds called
thiosulfinates. These sulfur compounds, best known for causing eyes to
water, may lower blood pressure and break up potentially harmful clusters
of platelets in the bloodstream.
But, up to now, most researchers and nutritionists assumed that the
best way to seize on garlic's cardiovascular benefits was to eat the small
bulbs in their most unfettered form: in the raw.
Not so, discovered ARS plant geneticist Philipp Simon and his
colleagues Pablo Cavagnaro, Alejandra Camargo and Claudio Galmarini, whose
findings appear in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Simon
works in the ARS Vegetable Crops Research Unit in Madison, Wis. Cavagnaro,
Camargo and Galmarini work at the INTA La Consulta in Argentina.
Since most people worldwide sauté or bake their garlic before eating
it, the researchers wanted to know if cooking reduced garlic's
blood-thinning effects. They also wanted to see what impact crushing the
garlic before cooking had on its ability to bust up artery-clogging
platelets.
After boiling, baking and microwaving both crushed and uncrushed cloves
of garlic and evaluating them for their antiplatelet activity, the
scientists learned that lightly cooked, crushed garlic provides most of
the health benefits found in raw garlic. The only exception was
microwaving, which stripped garlic almost entirely of its blood-thinning
effects.
The researchers contend that while heating might be generally blamed
for reducing garlic's antiplatelet activity, it's the crushing that
enables the beneficial compounds to be freed in the first place.
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