Boost Your Immunity with Garlic

Garlic is a powerful immune-boosting food! I love to add it to soups, stir-fry, pasta dishes, or just eat it broiled on toast with butter!

Steel yourself to cold and flu season this year with garlic! There are many purported health benefits of garlic (such as reducing cancer, lowering bad cholesterol, and warding off ticks), some of which are better researched than others. Garlic’s ability to fight infections and bacteria is well-known, however.

Garlic contains a sulfur compound called allicin, which gives garlic its distinctive smell and makes it anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral. 

You should crush or press the garlic to activate the enzyme processes that produce allicin.

This fall, I’m trying to work a little more garlic into our diet to capture its flu-fighting power. When a recipe calls for 1-2 cloves, I up it to 3-4. We’ll also try to eat more garlic in raw, unheated form, such as in a sandwich spread or homemade salad dressing.

Your body does not build up resistance to the antibacterial properties in garlic, so it’s fine to use on a frequent basis.

garlic

Here are 10 dishes to enjoy with garlic:

  1. Chili
  2. In an alfredo sauce
  3. Soups (such as this chilled Cucumber and Avocado Soup)
  4. Beans and rice
  5. Cozy Lentils
  6. Hummus
  7. Slow-cooker chicken
  8. Broiled on a baguette, with olive oil and cheese
  9. Roasted vegetables (we especially like garlic with green beans, asparagus, or potatoes)
  10. Garlic Cheese Grits

[question]While we’re on the topic of garlic, can I just ask: Have you read Dracula by Bram Stoker? It is a marvelous book…and the darkening autumn days are the perfect time to curl up with a good book![/question]

Check out these other immune-boosting foods:

8 Comments

  1. I LOVE garlic! My mom uses it a lot so I grew up eating it, and now I cook with it a lot. Definitely something I need to start cooking with more, though! 🙂

  2. Hi! Garlic is great for a lot of things, but you need to be careful with it if you are concerned with low blood pressure.

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