Garlic

Garlic is a natural disinfectant and can be added to food as a preservative. In cooking you can use garlic to hide the smell of rotting meat and as a replacement for monosodium glutamate for covering up the taste of stale food. Garlic is of interest for sustainable living because it is easy to grow without chemicals and can be used to replace a number of artificial chemicals.

Addictive

Some people say they like the taste of garlic but garlic is so physically addictive that it is hard to find out who actually likes the taste instead of just needing another hit.

Garlic and salt share a common problem, the more you add to food, the more you need. Garlic anaesthetises your sense of smell and taste. You add garlic to food and taste the food, making your sense of taste less effective, then you add more garlic to the food and taste the food, making sense of your taste less effective, then you add more garlic to the food and taste the food, making your sense of taste less effective, then you add more garlic to the food and taste the food, making your sense of taste less effective, then you add more garlic...

Garlic addiction has reached the point where you could sell pure garlic rubbish. Mix garlic, any type of cheap fat, salt, and sugar then sell it as food. The poisonous mush will fall apart so add some cheap worthless flour to bind the ingredients into lumps. Stamp the paste out in the shape of something people think is food, the shape of a steak or a chicken, or a potato crisp, fruit, body parts, anything people put in their mouth. All you need is a good name and a fancy package to sell the crud.

Cordon Bleu cooking is considered the finest type of cooking. Back when I first tried out cordon blue cooking, I used what was then an old book by one of the acknowledged masters of the art. There was no garlic mentioned anywhere outside a paragraph describing some nasty food served in the slums of Marseilles. Many years later I purchased a replacement book on the same subject and every second recipe was infected with garlic.

Bactericide

You travel to Bali then end up with Bali Belly. Yeah, it is horrible. There are several causes. The same thing happens in lots of countries under several names. One cause is that people not used to chilli are hit with a lot of chilli and their body decides to clean out the irritant. Another cause is garlic.

Our large intestine is the final part of our digestive system where bacteria help digest food and the good bacteria produce food elements not common in our food. Garlic in large quantities kills bacteria including the good bacteria. In parts of Asia garlic is good because it protects people from bad bacteria. In Bali one of the sauces offered with meals is pure crushed garlic. The sudden hit of garlic kills the good bacteria as well as the bad, leaving your large intestine ready for colonisation by any bacteria including bad bacteria. Within a couple of hours of eating the large quantity of garlic in some Balinese dishes, you will rush to the toilet because your body wants to flush out the bad chemicals. When you stop eating the garlic you will become sick again because the bad bacteria rush in.

If you eat garlic, eat fresh yogurt to replace the dead good bacteria. In Australia you can get fresh Jalna yogurt almost everywhere. Almost all other yogurt is cooked after creation. Yakult is a drink made from milk, sugar, water, and a yogurt bacteria. Yakult uses only one good bacteria. Jalna use three good bacteria plus plain Jalna has no added sugar and is not dilute with water. Use a decent size spoon of Jalna about an hour or two after a garlic laced meal.

There are capsules you can take that are full of the yogurt style bacteria and are more convenient because they do not need refrigeration. Consult your Naturopath for effective capsules and a reference letter you may need when taking capsules into some Asian countries.

Fungicide

Garlic is the common name for Allium sativum. Allium sativum contains allicin, a powerful antibiotic and has a historical use in medicine going back several thousand years. Allium sativum also contains phytoncide, a powerful antifungal compound, another use of garlic going back a few thousand years. Several strong sulfur based chemicals in garlic made garlic a popular way to kill parasites.

Pesticide

Several toxic plants are used as natural pesticides. Tobacco kills humans and bugs. Garlic is less toxic to humans but will still keep away slugs and kill a wide variety of insects in their early growth stage, the larval stage. Mince a garlic bulb into a litre (2 pints) of water. Leave the mix for an hour. Spray around your vegetables. You can make the mix more potent against slugs by adding ground pepper of any sort, just make sure it has an hour or two to soak into the water. Slugs and larvae do not like soap or detergents. Dissolve soap or detergent in the mix before spraying. Filter the mix before pouring into your sprayer because the sludge will block the spray tip.

Use the solid or liquid soap or detergent you use to wash your hands, not the laundry type as laundry washing mixtures contain strong ingredients that kill plants. Laundry washing powders and liquids are only safe on mature plants and only when diluted by a whole washing machine full of water plus the water from several rinses.

Companion plant

You can use garlic as companion plants to draw pests away from vegetables and flowers. Onions and chives work equally well and are edible. Plant onions, chives, and garlic next to broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, fruit trees, and tomatoes. Garlic, onions, and chives attract aphids and similar sap sucking insects. You will still need the garlic and other sprays for other insects and bacteria.

That stink

Allyl methyl sulfide is another strong chemical in garlic and is the one that makes your breath stink. The chemical escapes from your digestion into your blood then through your lungs. After a while it leaks out of your skin giving your whole body that garlic stink. You cannot wash the stink off, you just have to survive a few days without friends. Allyl methyl sulfide is the chemical most likely to protect you from vampires.

Medications

Garlic contains so many strong chemicals that it blocks the effectiveness of many medications. Garlic causes diarrhoea and dehydration, making garlic a disaster to have with any of the many medications causing similar problems. Consult a doctor before consuming garlic.

Garlic thins your blood so do not use with the most common anticoagulant chemicals, warfarin and aspirin. If you are looking at taking very small doses of warfarin or aspirin as protection against blood clots or heart attack, discuss with your therapist the use of garlic as a less toxic alternative.

Headaches

You know that dehydration will cause headaches. You know that bad chemicals will cause headaches. People tell you drinking alcoholic drinks will give you a headache. Try this test.

• Day 1: Live a clean life and drink plenty of water. The next morning you will not have a hangover.
• Day 2: Live a clean life and drink plenty of cheap red wine. The next morning you will have a hangover from the dehydration, preservatives, and histamines.
• Day 3: Live a clean life and drink plenty of well made aged red wine. The next morning you will not have a hangover from the preservatives because a good wine does not need them, or from histamines because many of the bad chemicals in wine drop out during the aging and end up as the hard crystals at the bottom of the bottle.
• Day 4: Live a clean life, drink plenty of water, and eat six fried garlic cloves, or the equivalent garlic juice, as is common in many restaurant dishes. The next morning you will have the worst hangover in this whole test.
• Day 5: Live a clean life and drink plenty of water in an attempt to recover form the garlic. Eat fresh live yogurt to replace the intestinal bacteria killed by garlic.
• Day 6: Live a clean life, drink plenty of water, and keep eating the yogurt. You should be over the garlic hangover but you need the extra day to recover from the other symptoms.