Meet Black Garlic, the new kid in town, it has even more health promoting benefits than its paler sister. Garlic has been both loved and hated, for centuries, for its taste but you can’t dispute its amazing medicinal powers.

Benefits of Garlic

• Promotes cardiovascular health
• Decreases inflammation, especially for osteoarthritis
• Strengthens your immune system
• Helps fight cancer cells, especially pancreatic, lung, brain and breast
• Natural antibiotic

What’s makes garlic great?

Garlic is anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral making it a powerful healer for almost any infection even those that are antibiotic resistant such as MRSA. Garlic contains over 100 different compounds, antioxidants, minerals and vitamins but its most effective ingredient is believed to be the antioxidant allicin. This sulfur compound is what gives garlic its famous odor. Garlic doesn’t actually contain allicin, it creates it from alliin and allinase when the garlic clove becomes damaged or crushed. The allicin is created to protect the plant from harm and dies off in an hour after being crushed. Researchers have found that when allicin dies garlic creates sulfenic acid, which has the ability to destroy free radicals upon contact. This makes it super effective at protecting your body from everything from aging to cancer.

What is black garlic and why is it different?

Black garlic was born in Korea and is raw garlic that has been fermented.  Raw garlic is placed in humidity and temperature controlled room for 30 days then moved to another room for 45 days to ‘oxidise’. This process creates garlic that is black in colour, softer in texture and has a more mild taste. As raw garlic breaks down during fermentation it becomes lower in alliin but has double the amount of other antioxidants. Black garlic also contains more sulphur compounds than regular garlic. One very important compound is s-allyl-cysteine or SAC; black garlic contains 5.84mg of SAC as opposed to raw garlic 0.32mg content. This compound is more stable than allicin, is easily absorbed by the body and helps reduce cholesterol synthesis making it very heart healthy. Black Garlic is now produced in Tasmania and is available throughout Australia from markets, gourmet grocers and delicatessens. It is used rather like truffles and is sweet and delicious, without the pungency of raw garlic. It has been described as tasting like “balsamic vinegar” and “soy sauce,” with a "prune-like" flavour. However, black garlic has a lower level of alliin than raw garlic so be sure to use raw or aged garlic to heal infections.

How to add garlic to your diet?

Garlic is best eaten raw, freshly crushed or chewed within an hour to get the most benefit of its allicin content. Once cooked it loses many of its active ingredients, especially allicin. Garlic can be added to almost any foods or even juiced. 1 to 2 cloves per day is a recommended amount. For even more health benefits try sprouting your old garlic cloves. Sprouts contain even higher amounts of anti-oxidants. But if fresh or black garlic is not for you, you can still get all the benefits in another way

Enter Aged Organic Garlic

In response to the natural process of degradation of fresh garlic described above, scientists discovered a way to stabilise garlic whilst preserving all its healing qualities. What they in fact found was a way to enhance Garlic’s properties whilst maintaining its purity. They did this by aging organic Garlic in a temperature and moisture controlled environment for up to 20 months.

No more Garlic breath with Aged Garlic

Aged garlic extract, as well as being more potent (due to the development of a new antioxidant not found in fresh garlic, S-Allyl-Cysteine), also prevents the unpleasant effects often experienced when we eat Garlic in our food. Garlic breath, for instance, an unpleasant side effect resulting from consuming fresh garlic, is not experienced when you consume Aged Garlic. Neither is the indigestion many of us feel when we eat a little too much pasta or garlic bread!

Mr Vitamins recommends

Nutralife - Nutralife Kyolic Aged Garlic Extract Kyolic Aged Garlic Extract High Potency Everyday Formula 112 is made from organically grown garlic cloves, naturally aged in controlled conditions for up to 20 months. During this unique aging process, odour-causing compounds found in raw garlic are converted into stable, odourless, water-soluble Sulphur-containing antioxidant compounds. Find out more and shop online for Nutralife Aged Garlic Extract 'Ask a naturopath' for more information about adding garlic to your diet.