Cultlike followers can attest to the slap-your-mama kick it brings to food. But for many garlic lovers in the Bay Area, the prowess of the legend-heavy herb stretches from curing the common cold all the way to warding off cancer.
As the Bay Area gears up for Friday's opening of the 32nd Gilroy Garlic Festival -- the popular annual event where tens of thousands of garlic lovers convene -- the acrid bulb's reputation as an all-powerful curative blossoms. But is garlic really as healthy as its boosters say?"You think any germs would want to come in you with that smell?" said Katie Nemeth of Gilroy's Christopher Ranch, an avid garlic consumer who credits the herb for her infrequent colds. "Garlic's like a beast. There's got to be something healthy about it when it smells like that."
Tracing back to ancient Egypt, the reputed health benefits of garlic have included lowering high blood pressure and cholesterol and curing allergies, coughs, toothaches, some cancers and even warts. Eating garlic for health has become a long-standing practice in many cultures.
"I eat garlic because it's tradition and it's good to prevent flu and high blood pressure," said Rudy Yap, manager of World Ginseng, a Chinese herbal store in San Jose that does brisk business in garlic products.
Although Yap does not know how many of his customers eat garlic on a regular basis, he can speculate a large number do because, he notes smiling, "you can smell
it on their breath!"
Stink together
The potent smell of the bulb is not for the faint of nose, garlic fanatics warn. According to folklore, gladiators would rub cloves all over their battle-ready bodies to repel combat opponents and even lions. That use prompted its Italian name 'la rosa puzzolente' or the stinking rose.
Thousands of years later, in 1991, that delicate designation became the inspiration for The Stinking Rose, a popular eatery in San Francisco. The North Beach restaurant reportedly uses 50 tons of garlic per year.
"Garlic has a lot of fun and funny connotations," says Dante Serafini, the founder of The Stinking Rose. "The busiest day of the year is Valentine's Day. It's a kind of romantic bonding that goes on when two people can eat garlic together. If you can stink together, it's OK."
Because of the smell, cabdrivers in San Francisco reportedly refuse to pick up customers from the Stinking Rose. But for celebrities, garlic is no deterrent. According to Serafini, both Heather Locklear and David Beckham are frequent devotees of the Stinking Rose in Beverly Hills.
But before consumers go Cookie Monster on exponential cloves of garlic to cure the sniffles, scientists suggest that the herb isn't all that it's stinking up to be.
Debunking the myths
In 2007, scientists at the Stanford Prevention Research Center ticked off the vast garlic-loving community by finding that garlic does not lower LDL or what is known as "bad" cholesterol. Funded by the National Institutes of Health on a $1.5 million grant, the study was the first of its kind, debunking what many believed to be a scientifically sound property of garlic.
"It's really got all kinds of mythological lore that goes with it. It's fascinating that people are so invested in garlic," said Christopher Gardner, the lead author of the study who also suffers from a self-diagnosed addiction to garlic.
"We told people in our study it doesn't work. They said thanks for including us in the study, but we don't believe you and we're going to eat it anyway."
Although no scientific tests have established conclusively that garlic has curative properties, scientists do say some effects are "plausible." Translated into layman's terms, garlic might do something positive when it comes to flu, allergies, prostate cancer, high blood pressure and other heart-related problems. That's enough of an endorsement for many aficionados.
"I consider garlic the heartbeat of life," said Ken Fry, a pyro-chef at Gilroy Garlic Festival. "There are reasons for that. It's great for our cardiovascular system."
Scientists also say that cooking garlic deactivates the chemicals that may provide its medicinal potency. But Gardner says cooked or not, garlic is a "definitive" solution to repel vampires.
Even so, Santa Clara County's health officer, when asked about the medical properties of garlic, sagely slipped around the hype.
"If they have an issue with cholesterol or heart disease," said Marty Fenstersheib, "I would want them to go to their doctor and get treated appropriately, and not depend on garlic."
No comments:
Post a Comment