Eat More Garlic!

A diet rich in garlic can have a significant positive effect on your health, according to the New York Times. It seems that garlic increases the production of hydrogen sulfide in your blood, which—in the short term—relaxes your blood vessels and increases blood flow. In the long term:

The power to boost hydrogen sulfide production may help explain why a garlic-rich diet appears to protect against various cancers, including breast, prostate, and colon cancer, say the study authors. Higher hydrogen sulfide might also protect the heart, according to other experts.

The downside (if you can call it that)? Benefits from garlic consumption in studies required an equivalent of two medium-sized cloves of garlic per day, and while some countries—namley Italy, Korea, and China—average as high as eight to twelve cloves a day—it may be a lot of garlic by your standards. Then again, if two cloves a day keeps the doctor away, I can deal with the bad breath in other ways.

References here and here.

Garlic is also an antioxidant, which can help reduce muscular soreness after a workout by neutralizing free radicals in your bloodstream.

However, as the article notes, you have to eat A LOT of it if you really want to see the benefits; a clove is equivalent to about a teaspoon of chopped garlic (if you use the pre-chopped stuff like I do). So here's a recipe that uses a ton of garlic AND quinoa, which is my favorite super food, and a new recipe for those of you who have already tried my garlic cucumber quinoa salad.

On a related note, I dreamed earlier this week that I went to a school where they were trying to turn all of the students into vampires. So maybe eating plenty of garlic will also keep those crazy vampires out of my dreams.