Garlic: The Death of Natural Health Onion?

Small, white, and slight ‘hot’. That’s garlic. Allium sativum L., Latin name of garlic, is a species in the onion family Alliaceae. Their close families include the onion, shallot, and leek. Garlic has been used during recorded history for both culinary and medicinal functions. It has a distinctive bitter, 'hot', flavor that smoothes and sweetens considerably with cuisine

A rhizome of garlic, the most generally used plant element, is separated into frequent discrete fleshy sectors called cloves which are used for eating or for cooking and remedial purposes. The leaves, stems (scape) and flowers (bulbils) on the head (spathe) are also suitable for eating and most regularly consumed while young and still tender. The papery, protective layers of 'skin' over a variety of parts of the plant and the roots emotionally involved to the bulb are the only parts not measured edible.

Allium sativum produces in the untamed in areas where it has become grew wild; it perhaps moved down from the species Allium longicuspis, which grows wild in south-western Asia. The 'wild garlic', 'crow garlic' and 'field garlic' of Britain are the species Allium ursinum, Allium vineale and Aleum oleraceum, correspondingly. In North America, 'Allium vineale, identified as 'wild-' or 'crow garlic', and Allium candadensis, recognized as 'meadow-' or 'wild garlic', are ordinary weeds in fields.

Garlic is extensively used around the world for its pungent flavor, as a flavor or condiment. Depending on the shape of cookery, the flavor is either mellow or intense. It is habitually matching with onion, tomato, or ginger. The parchment-like membrane is much like the skin of an onion, and is normally uninvolved before using in rare or cooked appearance. An option is to slash the crown off the bulb, coat cloves of that natural health stuff by dribbling olive oil (or other oil based seasoning) above them and cook them in the oven. The garlic softens and can be extracted from the cloves by pressing the (root) end of the bulb or separately by pressing one end of the clove.

Young scapes are gentle and edible. They are also acknowledged as 'garlic spears', 'stems', or 'tops'. Scapes normally have a milder flavor than cloves. They are habitually used in stir frying or arranged like asparagus. This wonderful natural health onion leaves are a popular vegetable in various parts of Asia, particularly Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Indonesia and Korean cuisines. The leaves are cut, hygienic and then stir-fried with eggs, meat, or vegetables. Garlic is crucial to numerous Mediterranean dishes. Combination garlic with eggs and olive oil creates aioli ("garlic and oil" in Provençal). The Spanish variation does not use eggs. Garlic, oil, and a chunky base make skordalia (from the Greek and Italian names of garlic). Blending garlic, almond, oil and soaked bread produces ajoblanco (ajo blanco is Spanish for "white garlic").

Medicinal use and natural health benefits: Myth?

Garlic has been used as both cooking and remedy in numerous cultures for thousands of years, dating as far back as the time that the Egyptian pyramids were made. Garlic is declared to aid prevent heart disease plus atherosclerosis, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and cancer. But Allium sativum does not possess, as many people think it does, cancer-fighting properties due to the presence of allylic sulfur compounds such as diallyl disulfide (DADs), supposed not to be an anticarcinogen.

Animal studies, and some early tentative studies in bacteria, have recommended promising cardiovascular disadvantages of garlic. A Czech study found garlic supplementation improved accumulation of cholesterol on vascular walls of animals. Another study had related outcome, with garlic supplementation radically rising the amounts of placque in the aortas of cholesterol-fed rabbits. In a different study proved that supplementation with garlic extract enlarged vascular calcification in human patients with high blood cholesterol. Nevertheless, a NIH-funded randomized clinical trial published in Archives of Internal Medicine in 2007 found that eating of garlic, in any form, did not decrease cholesterol levels in patients with fairly high baseline stages.

However, in 1858, Louis Pasteur observed garlic's antibacterial activity, and it was used as an antiseptic to avert gangrene throughout World War I and World War II. In contemporary naturopathy, garlic is used as a healing for intestinal worms and other intestinal parasites, both orally and as an anal suppository. Garlic cloves are used as a medicine for infections (especially chest problems), digestive disorders, and fungal infections such as thrush. When crushed, Allium sativum yields allicin, a powerful antibiotic and anti-fungal composite (phytoncide). It also holds alliin, ajoene, enzymes, vitamin B, minerals, and flavonoids.

Generally, I think that this white tiny onion regarded natural healthiness herb still has to be used on a doctor requirement.

Source: http://www.wikipedia.org

Photo: http://www.garlicbreakthrough.com