One of my mothers-in-law, a fantastic cook, likes to say “you can never use too much garlic.” And while I think that overstates the case, it’s true that people and cultures all around the world enjoy putting a lot of garlic in a lot of dishes.
And yesterday it occurred to me to ask: Why? What is it about garlic that makes it such a satisfying flavor for people, in general? It seems unlikely that we evolved to crave garlic in particular, but is there something in its chemistry that matches something we did evolve to crave? Or is the popularity primarily a cultural issue?
Obviously some people don’t care for garlic. I’m not meaning to imply that everyone loves it all the time. But what accounts for its broad popularity, beyond “it tastes good”?
Evolutionary response to the health benefits of garlic. Since people detest the smell of the stuff on other people’s breath, they keep their distance and so don’t infect you with their nasty germs. Consequently, the gene for finding the taste pleasant is strongly selected for as a survival advantage.
Maybe.
Oh, and those who weren’t offended by garlic wore it to protect themselves from vampires. Those that couldn’t stand the stuff now walk amongst the dead. Evolution wins!
my Mom had no idea that garlic is the Food Of The Gods. I only learned it when I had a roommate that used to saute garlic on a cold winter’s morn and put it on top of pasta, with butter and salt.
OMSMOG ( oh my sweet mother of god) that was most excellent and the whole house smelled like heaven. HEAVEN!!
since then, I have also felt “you can’t use too much garlic”
Garlic is also very easily grown in kitchen gardens and even as a houseplant. Even the most impoverished people could add a lot of flavor without having to shell out money for what were, at times, very expensive spices.
Just a theory - garlic has a compound that thins the blood. Maybe our genes have some tastes that express themselves to ingest some things in moderation that are actually good for us (other examples would be wine & chocolate). Before the processed & packaging craze, there was actually wholesome food available. So, sometimes our bodies tell us what to eat. of course, no going overboard with sugar, fat, carbs, etc.
Pet peeve time. All this talk of us evolving to like garlic because it’s good for us in some way is what is often referred to as an evolutionary “Just-So” story. There’s a real urge these days for some reason to link any old observed fact to some putative evolutionary selective pressure even in the absence of any actual evidence supporting the explanation. Not everything in life needs to be the result of millions of years of natural selection. Garlic tastes good. Given a wide selection of plants in the world, some of them are obviously going to taste better than others. Garlic is on the thin end of the taste bell curve. Lacking any studies demonstrating genetic evidence of positive selection in the region of the garlic taste receptor gene, or at least showing that over evolutionary time, garlic-eaters have outreproduced non garlic eaters, there’s no reason to search for an evolutionary explanation.
Fact is, we are omnivores and probably tried to eat just about everything over the millennia our species has been around (and prior). Unless something is poisonous, some group of people somewhere is going to eat it. And even then, they’ll try and find a way to detoxify it and eat it!
Garlic stimulates the gastrohippocampal centers and deep nuclei in the brain, providing gratifying feedback loops that lead to ever more garlic consumption. This has led to our evolving from primitive Hominidae, otherwise we would look like this.
I think it is a reasonable hypothesis that all our taste preferences are influenced by evolution. Since you haven’t disproved this hypothesis, I don’t see any problem with considering some questions that we would have if the hypothesis is true.
Maybe my ignorance is showing. I’d have guessed that humans began eating garlic very recently, at least on an evolutionary time scale. I can’t imagine a hunter-gatherer society munching on garlic roots. Maybe smashing it up and using it to season meat.
Have hominids been eating garlic for millions of years? Do other primates eat garlic?
