Vampires, look away!

It may not be Halloween anymore, and spring is right around the corner, but the season for Garlic is all-year round. This resilient little plant – a distant cousin of onions, in fact! – is a staple to many popular and familiar dishes all over the world. The impact of garlic in many cultures’ histories is so great that there are origin myths involving the plant.

We all know that garlic is healthy, but this wouldn’t be a Fast Metabolism Diet Community blog post if we didn’t talk about it a little.

Without further ado, here’s the health perks of garlic!

A LITTLE BACKGROUND AND HISTORY

No one’s really sure where or when garlic was first harvested domestically, though it’s commonly attributed to have originated from the variants native to Central, Middle East, or Southwestern Asia. There are records of the plant being cultivated during the Mesopotamian historical period, as well as various accounts of cultivation and domestication in China and Egypt around the same time period.

Garlic was also present in Mediterranean Europe, albeit in a rarer capacity, where it was used as a fairly common cooking ingredient. It was also well-known and generally acknowledged as a medicinal plant, often noted in medicinal manuals especially during the 12th to 14th century across many regions. It’s been used to treat a variety of maladies, from insect bites to coughs, and as an early form of antibiotic for infections.

Today, garlic is one of the most common cooking ingredients worldwide, and is readily available in many places where it’s sold fresh, dried, or otherwise processed and prepackaged, such as powdered or granulated garlic.

GARLIC’S NUTRITIONAL VALUE

Garlic contains a lot of nutrients despite its small size. A small 100-gram serving (roughly 3.5 oz) of raw garlic contains a whopping 33 grams of carbohydrates and 6.36 grams of protein, as well as 2.1 grams of dietary fiber and only 1 gram of fat.

It also has a lot of minerals: garlic contains 181 mg of calcium, 1.7 mg of iron, 25 mg of magnesium, 1.67 mg of manganese, 153 mg of phosphorus, 401 mg of potassium, 17 mg of sodium, and 1.16 mg of zinc. Whew!

The vitamins aren’t also anything to scoff at. A 100-gram serving of raw garlic is packed with essential nutrients like choline, fikatem pantothenic acid, niacin, riboflavin, thiamine, and vitamins B6 and C.

THE VERDICT

Garlic is on the short list of foods that are good to eat in all three phases, from Phase 1’s high-carb meal plan to Phase 2’s protein-heavy selection to Phase 3’s healthy-fat options. You can’t go wrong with garlic!

So pack in your garlic variant and product of choice this COVID-19 pandemic. Whether you’re just starting on your fast metabolism diet cycle or coming out of it, there’s always room for it!

The post The Many Perks and Benefits of Garlic in Your Diet appeared first on The Fast Metabolism Diet Community.