Customer Reviews

The Garlic Book: Nature's Powerful Healer

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Modern science has confirmed that garlic possesses strong curative powers, especially for lowering cholesterol, stabilising blood pressure and as a natural antibiotic. This practical guide looks at garlic as medicine and food and tells the reader how to include it in a self-care regimen.

The book provides a brief history of garlic, investigates its potential, its role in heart disease, explains how garlic thins the blood and explores the plant's other actions. These include its role as an antibiotic. Although garlic has a slower and weaker effect than antibiotics, it has almost no side effects, does not create bacterial resistance and acts against a very wide range of organisms. It is thus perfect for use against chronic and less dangerous infections.

Garlic is particularly effective against fungal and yeast infections and parasites, as its reactive sulphur compounds attack the invasive organisms without harming the body. The section on products and preparations considers garlic oil capsules, dried garlic powder and deodorised, aged garlic. The Further Reading section includes a list of books and selected scientific references on the specific properties of garlic. The book concludes with an index.

One thing I liked about this book, it tells you a lot about garlic which is what I was looking for but it doesn't waste a lot of pages with all kinds of garlic recipes. Not that I mind if an author comes up with some unusual recipes such as how to use the product in bigger quantities or recipes about less usual ingredients such in a book I have about bicarbonate of soda but still I have the idea that nowadays authors of health books fill pages with recipes you can find anywhere. I am sure everybody has recipes where garlic is used...... Like other modern authors he does repeat himself quite a bit but that is the modern way of writing. Another thing which puzzled me is that he tells you to substitute brown bread for white, for example, which to me meant that you should quit eating brown bread and start to eat white but I suppose that this is the American way of talking. Since I finished this book I have read another one written by an American author and I found the same kind of sentences. I suppose British people would say:" substitute white bread for brown". Well, I know what he means anyway.

I liked the fact that he makes the distinction between herbal teas and normal teas as most authors don't and one is left in doubt whether they mean one or the other or both. I found it also very useful to know that for garlic to work for your health you shouldn't cook it long, therefore it is better to add it when you are finishing cooking the dish. I was left with a doubt not only after reading this book but other books: some authors and doctors say vegetable oils are good for you, this one for example says no soybean or safflower oil, others say that coconut oil is good for you but again others say not! I wish experts would agree on this because it becomes very confusing. I even have a book where the author tells you first that safflower oil is not good for you only to say later than it is. Anyway, next winter I will be planting garlic in the garden now I know how to do it and we are now eating a lot more garlic too!