5 ms·

If you lose allicin you lose some nice properties (antimicrobial, antiinflammatory, etc): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10594976 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih

• sambe 10y ago
  But those properties may not be relevant to you when consuming garlic anyway. The vast majority of such studies are showing the properties in isolation (petri-dish). People love to extrapolate that to "garlic prevents colds", but it doesn't follow. I'm not going to pay to read the full article in this case but you at least have to be careful about this.
  • joeyspn 10y ago
    > But those properties may not be relevant to you when consuming garlic anyway. Many of this properties are well known (not so well understood). I posted a random quick example, but there are also studies in vivo (rodent models and humans). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4103721/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4103721/
    • sambe 10y ago
      My point was that you have to be careful in general. In the specific case of garlic, I don't draw the conclusion from your second link that it is "well known". There are some promising results for some of the individual diseases, but there are also many caveats. The conclusion states: "Although it is shown that garlic may have a significant clinical potential either in their own right or as adjuvant therapy in different disorders, however, due to some issues, such as methodological inadequacies, small sample sizes, lack of information regarding dose rationale, variation between efficacy and effectiveness trials, the absence of a placebo comparator, or lack of control groups more standard experiments and researches are needed to confirm the beneficial effect of garlic in various diseases."
      • joeyspn 10y ago
        > I don't draw the conclusion from your second link that it is "well known". Then it must be a cultural thing... =) If you read the first sentence in the abstract you can read: "Throughout history, many different cultures have recognized the potential use of garlic for prevention and treatment of different diseases.". Here in the Mediterranean, garlic is known to be really healthy (along with red wine and olive oil). Many people eat garlic in the morning just for the health benefits, and we even have (famous?) smashed garlic dishes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aioli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aioli > My point was that you have to be careful in general. Agree. Sometimes more context/evidence is required. My point is that the bioavailability of compounds in food might differ if the food is presented in raw or elaborated/processed form.
        • keithnoizu 10y ago
          It's almost as though breaking down the cell walls of plant material exposes various molecules to oxygen and other compound in air resulting in the possibility for chemical change than would exist it the material was consumed directly.
          • bumblebeard 10y ago
            Unless you swallow your food whole I imagine that your teeth might break down cell walls too.
        • sambe 10y ago
          The first sentence is setting the scene, not confirming the hypothesis. If things being "known" by cultural history was sufficient, we wouldn't need to do science. In reality, a good proportion of "known" things are wrong or the very minimum more subtle than expected. It is also "known" that being physically cold causes colds (Mediterraneans are especially paranoid about this in my experience). The majority of studies show this to be either untrue or borderline. I do agree that there is clear potential for chopping food to affect it's nutritional value. I would expect chopping alone to be of minimal impact in most cases if no other evidence was available. Elaborate processing is rather different.
• Retric 10y ago
  Antimicrobial food would be bad for you as it would harm digestion.
  • kaitai 10y ago
    Not quite true. Antimicrobial doesn't mean quite what you think; it means anti-some-microbes. Honey, for instance, has several antimicrobial or antibiotic aspects. Some honey is so because enzymes in it produce hydrogen peroxide, while other honey is so for different reasons, not fully understood. If you feed mice a lot of honey, their intestinal flora rebalance -- in one study, for instance, feeding mice honey as a food supplement increased their bifidobacteria and lactobacilli counts. This is actually probably good for digestion.
    • Retric 10y ago
      Feed mice a new diet of any kind and their gut will rebalance.
• espadrine 10y ago
  Aren't you severely grinding it with your teeth, saliva, and gastric acids anyway? (Honestly asking, I have no idea.)
  • sliverstorm 10y ago
    Right, but teeth are natural and a mortar and pestle are not /s
  • kuschku 10y ago
    Correct. Freshly blended food is also no issue. The first issue is that you don’t immediately consume it after blending, but wait a few minutes or hours. The second issue is that the grinding with teeth requires you to spend energy, which reduces the energy you gain from the food.
• maxerickson 10y ago
  How does rushing it into an acid bath preserve it?
  • erikpukinskis 10y ago
    The goal isn't to preserve it forever, the goal is to preserve it long enough to get to the bacteria which can make use of it.