Doc, I was looking at various yoga/ayurvedic websites trying to find a reason why they avoided garlic and those were some of the claims. Thank you for your explanation about garlic and vampires too, it is quite clear whose comments were patronizing and whose were not. Thanks again
Generally speaking, religious food restrictions are not founded on a rigorous application of the scientific method, but rather, on folklore and superstition. The most likely reason that some yogis say garlic is toxic is that, at some point, a famous yogi got sick after eating garlic, and decided that there was a connection, because lots of people don’t really get the whole “correlation does not equal causation” thing. Then people figured that being really good at putting your leg behind your head is pretty much equivalent to a degree in nutrition, because lots of people are also really bad at understanding why “appeal to authority” is a fallacy. If you want to know the effects of garlic on the human body, ask someone who has studied the question under laboratory conditions and submitted his work to peer review. And generally, those folks are okay with garlic.
If you want to know the spiritual effects of garlic, that’s a different question, and one that a yogi may potentially be able to answer. Although you’ll likely get a different question depending on what sort of spiritual advisor you seek out. Roman Catholics, for example, are every bit as spiritual as Ayurvedic Hindus, and they’re so avidly pro-garlic they’ve practically turned the herb into a sacrament.
Oh, and welcome to the boards.
That doesn’t seem to be necessarily the case. Googling “ayurveda” and “garlic” together brings up a ton of sites that promote the health benefits of garlic, such as this one:
Ayurveda considers garlic to be a powerful detoxifying and rejuvenating agent.
I am pretty sure the origin of the no garlic thing is related to cultural/religious beliefs about “hot” and “cold.”
Many cultures- from China to Mexico- have beliefs that certain foods have “hot” or “cold” properties that must be properly balanced or else they will have disastrous health effects. These may be related to the actual temperature of food, but usually it is pretty much random. In Cameroon I was told that drinking cold water would surely bring on malaria and that only married people should drink Guinness because it will make you ravenous for sex. In China, I’ve been chastised for eating too many pickled vegetable and told that coffee would surely do irreparable harm to my fertility, but that tomatoes would surely lead to beautifully clear skin.
It’s a hard thing to make sense of- we are so used to eating a “balanced diet” and thinking that is the end of it. But in many cultures, planning a meal is a careful balancing act of different “properties” that foods are believed to have.
India has some similar ways of thinking of food. Garlic ended up getting classified having a particularly strong influence. Most likely because it is a strong smelling food. I believe onions and hot peppers are classified the same way. It’s kind of like how in China eating penis-shaped food is supposed to make men more virile. They figured strong taste must mean strong effects.
I’ve been told by a non-garlic eating Hindu that these strong effects are anger and other negative emotions, but I suspect it’s probably actually about sexual effects.
Also, it seems like it’s mostly higher castes who are expected to avoid garlic. In my opinion, it seems likely that the real REAL reason is that garlic breath was considered unseemly for upper-class people. Plenty of cultures have considered garlic a low-class unrefined food. Parts of India just happened to incorporate that idea into their religion.
Now go ahead, eat that garlic bread!
For those people unfortunate enough to be allergic to allicins, garlic and onions may as well be poisonous. Full-on anaphylaxis is rare, but severe gastro-intestinal pain and cramping as well as rashes are common symptoms of garlic allergy.
My husband is living proof of irony - he’s Sicilian and is allergic to garlic and onions. A little well-cooked garlic in a sauce or whatever is generally OK, but almost any amount of raw garlic such as in pesto or salsa is to be avoided completely.
Just don’t store your garlic in olive oil, particularly at room temperature.
Acidification can cause the botulism toxin to grow! One cite.
Otherwise, enjoy!
Yogis stem from Hindu/Indian culture, so asking on an Indian-based board is a good idea. A lot of Indians speak English as a second language. Its not hard if you actually try. Its pretty obvious I fat fingered tantric. But please, keep whining, thats always pleasant.
Not to mention, you are asking two questions here. A scientific one “Is garlic toxic.” and a religious one, “Why do some cultures ban garlic.” Well, you certainly got your answer to the first one and acting insulted when no one addressed your second one, which wasnt even in your original question, is being more than a little childish. Not to mention linking to pseudoscience really calls for a stronger reaction.
Its also worth mentioning that a lot of claims of garlic’s hidden health potential turns out to be quite exaggerated:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/02/27/garlics_health_benefits_minimized/
There’s a lot of confusion here. Ayurvedic diets are designed to reduce consumption of rajasic (fiery) foods, because it is believed that a person’s mental state becomes more fiery when they eat them. Garlic and onions, along with most other acidic foods (anything pickled, or chillies, for example, but also most foods with any sort of “extreme” flavor or texture) are considered rajasic.
Regardless of whether this is a bunch of nonsense, it doesn’t mean you can’t eat them, just that you’re supposed to limit your intake. You can also consume both in Ayurvedic tonics and remedies without any limitations (other than following the recommended dosages).
Garlic and onions are quite toxic- if you are a cat or dog. Never feed anything containing either to your pet cat or dog.
Many cultures and religions have taboos on eating or drinking certain things. Those taboos don’t necessarily come from a negative health effect of the food or drink in question, and the cultural or religious tradition may not have an explanation for why the food or drink is banned. For example, there’s no official reason why, in Judaism, you aren’t supposed to eat pork. There are many theories (including avoiding trichinosis, or not mixing socially with Gentiles, or pig farming not being suited to the climate of the Middle East), but there’s no official reason. You just aren’t supposed to do it. A lot of Americans would have a hard time telling you why, exactly, they don’t want to eat insects, but even so, only very adventurous American eaters would try them. This might be a similar food taboo from a different culture.
Of course, just because avoiding a food comes from a food taboo doesn’t mean there can’t be health benefits from excluding it from your diet. Someone who followed the Jewish food taboos would avoid some of the items on this page for that reason, and would probably be healthier for it. Or not, if they were replacing those foods with other equally unhealthy foods.
Modern research on diet, though, is trending away from the idea that there are foods that are “bad for you” that you should completely avoid. People who do that can feel deprived, and find their diet hard to stick to. A less-than-perfect diet that you actually follow is better than a perfect one that you don’t. Everything in moderation.
It’s funny, because Europe had the same sorts of prescientific ideas about health and diet. Like the idea of the four humours, and how in a healthy person they were in balance. And so if someone suffers from an imbalance you could restore them to health by doing things that increased the amount of a humour judged deficient, or decrease a humour that you had to much of. And this is the source of the bizarre practice of using leaches to cure sickness. According to the belief, too much blood could make you sick, and so a simple solution was to remove excess blood from the body.
China and India have ancient traditional beliefs about health and diet similar to the ideas about humours, but developed independently. Since onions and garlic have strong tastes, lots of folk beliefs have arisen about them. They taste strong, so they must have strong effects. In Europe they decided that garlic must be healthful, and if it was healthful it must repel insects and pests, and if it repels pests it also repels supernatural threats. Simple logic, right?
In India lots of people avoid garlic for all sorts of reasons. For instance, Jains believe in non-violence, so they are strict vegetarians. But some also believe it is wrong to eat root vegetables because that kills the plant. Others think garlic is a “hot” food, and eating a hot food will make your personality hot. And so on.
Didn’t you know that Dr. Beck is a vampire?
Mama Zappa:
An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but a garlic a day keeps everyone away.
Neither are “quite” toxic. A dog would need to eat a lot of onion (and even more garlic) to show any adverse health effects. From here:
Dogs develop hemolytic anemia if they eat enough onions. I don’t think that it matters too much whether the onions are cooked or not. The quantity of onions required is high enough that dogs can generally tolerate small doses of onions without any problem and moderate amounts of onion without clinically apparent disease, even though there may be measurable changes on lab test results. Cats are probably a little more sensitive to onion toxicity than dogs are. I can’t find an exact quantity of onions required to cause toxicity problems in dogs, but there are several case reports of onion toxicity and they involve whole onions or sizable portions of chopped onions (like a cup or more). I think that feeding dogs meat that has been cooked with onions is pretty safe but you might want to avoid giving them the broth from around something like pot-roast if there were a lot of onions used in the cooking, just to be safe.
Large amounts of garlic will produce similar toxicity problems in both dogs and cats. I think that the amount required is not likely to be eaten by a cat but there are probably a few dogs who would lap up a container of spilled garlic.
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Let’s cool it on the personal insults in General Questions, please.
No warning issued.
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Thank you for telling me that. I thought they were very toxic for cats. Ignorance fought.
“The Ghosts of Evolution” by Connie Barlow implied in a section that in order to preserve the reproductive parts* of the plant (seeds, in that book’s case), plants have evolved toxins to deter their consumption. Animals (and humans) in turn have evolved strong reactions to the (usually alkaline) toxins, which usually taste very strongly bitter, so they won’t want to eat them. Cyanide in apple seeds is one example of this phenomenon.
A bulb of garlic will sprout shoots in the right conditions and sort of counts as a reproductive organ… is our strong taste reaction to garlic an evolutionary warning system that we shouldn’t be eating it because it is toxic? (I’ve never seen garlic used as a vegetable, only sparingly as a spice.)
- Not just reproductive parts, but also vital parts like leaves which, unlike fruits, are not meant to be eaten. And the book goes on to talk about the roles of clay (kaolin) and cooking in neutralizing the toxins. It’s a good scientific read though it’s a bit dry at points.
The wikipedia page has a long list of possible side effects (and benefits) of garlic, notably allergies for certain people, interference with some drugs, and thinning of the blood.
I think the objection for certain spiritual groups is the same they have to narcotics and spicy food - they see it as a kind of stimulant, something that unbalances the bodily chemistry. Which is true to an extent - all food changes body chemistry - they just have a much lower threshhold for what’s considered acceptable. Your average person isn’t going to notice the effects, but if you are pursuing nirvana, it probably helps to have a much tighter control over regulating your body chemistry.
Robert Beck, an “expert” of dubious credentials claims
Looking at pubmed there seems to be evidence that garlic might actually be beneficial for memory/Alzheimers. There doesn’t seem to be anything on sulphone hydroxyl.