Garlic Nutrition Facts & Recipes: a Full Guide

Garlic is a nutritional powerhouse, filled with various good-for-you vitamins and minerals packed in each clove. It’s able to be used in many applications and is versatile in the kitchen. 

Enjoy the pungent root vegetable raw, fermented, cooked, or roasted. You can also use it in powder or oil form for cooking and in capsules to take as a supplement.

Not just a flavorful ingredient in cooking, garlic can also improve your health. It contains over 40 medicinal compounds, including allicin, the compound responsible for its sulfuric bite. 

Allicin is mentioned again and again in this garlic guide. It’s responsible for many of the benefits you can experience when consuming it regularly.

Garlic Nutrition Facts

Garlic comes in different sizes and varieties, with a clove weighing in as little as 3 grams or as much as 50 grams. For this reason, it’s hard to get the true nutrition facts of garlic per clove. 

Here are nutrition facts for 100g of raw garlic (whole or minced), which is at least 2 or more cloves:

As you can see from the nutrition facts, garlic is mostly carbs and protein with a little fat. The macros for 100g of garlic are:

• Carbohydrates: 85%
• Protein: 12%
• Fat: 3%

How to Eat Garlic

The best way to enjoy what garlic has to offer is by eating it raw. The benefits of eating raw garlic on an empty stomach first thing in the morning:

• Lowers the blood lipid profile
• Acts as an antibiotic and kills harmful bacteria in the gut
• Has detoxing effects
• Can improve digestion
• Helps promote weight loss

Cut a small piece of a garlic clove off and swallow it whole with some water, like a vitamin or supplement. Start small and work your way up to a whole clove (cut into pieces to make it easier to swallow).

Garlic can also be minced or diced and used to make tea (finished with honey to reduce the bite). Keeping it raw, you can use garlic in salads and for finishing dishes to get the most benefit.

Finding it tough to eat raw garlic? Try roasting it instead. 

Roasted garlic loses some vitamins and minerals, but it is almost as nutritious as raw garlic. However, the flavor becomes milder with a creamy texture and no sulphuric finish.

For those who like the flavor of garlic, there are lots of recipes and ways to use the root vegetable. 

Let’s look at some ways garlic can boost your health.

Prevents Cold and Flu

Garlic is great as an antiviral for colds and flu. In one study, 146 volunteers were divided between two groups, the garlic group, and the placebo group.

The garlic group took a garlic supplement daily over a 12-week period during typical cold and flu season. They saw a much shorter duration in cold length of 1.5 days compared to five days for the placebo. The placebo group also had 30 percent more sick days than the garlic group.

If you’re feeling under the weather, consider making 40 clove garlic soup. You may not smell the best, but it can help shorten the cold severity and length. 

As a preventive during the colder months, you may want to take a garlic supplement.

Improves Bone Health

Osteoporosis affects more women as they age than men, but taking garlic may be a benefit to your bone health.

The effects of garlic oil compared to pharmaceuticals was studied on rats (ovaries removed) with osteoporosis. Estrogen-induced bone and mineral loss was reduced the most in rats taking garlic oil.

This study also used rats and was able to determine that garlic oil helped with the intestinal transference of calcium. This could explain how garlic can build bone strength and mineral content after hormone loss.

Heals and Balances Skin Issues

The antiviral, antibacterial, antioxidant, antifungal, and antiseptic properties of garlic can also benefit the skin. Garlic can help fight free radicals, which can damage skin, along with UV rays.

Using garlic extract in topical form has been shown to heal:

• Wounds
• Keloid scars
• Fungal infections (athlete’s foot)
• Alopecia areata
• Psoriasis
• Corns
• Acne

Garlic extract was also used to heal genital warts on male patients compared to cryotherapy. Thirty-five men with warts on both sides used garlic extract on one side and cryotherapy on the other. 

At 2-week intervals, progress was checked and the results were similar. Cryotherapy can be expensive and garlic is a cheaper alternative to get the same results.

Kills Infectious Diseases

Garlic is said to have antimicrobial effects due mainly to its high allium content. As we continue to deal with antibiotic-resistant strains of bacterial infections, garlic may be part of the answer.

Allicin, along with other hydrophobic antimicrobial compounds, is found to inhibit bacterial biofilm to treat infections. To harness the antimicrobial power of garlic, researchers believe the vapor or gas phase is best against bacteria.

We should point out that garlic has been discussed quite a bit in regards to COVID-19. While it has been shown to have generally positive effects on boosting immune systems, there is no evidence to support that it specifically helps against this coronavirus.

To clear lung infections, including those caused by strep or staph bacteria, garlic once again shows promise. The root vegetable was crushed and turned into a vapor to be inhaled by participants. Bacterial growth was stopped, ultimately killing the infection in the lungs.

Researchers also tested garlic as an antibacterial against E. coli and S. aureus. Again, they found garlic extract to inhibit the growth of the bacterium in affected patients.

Drug-resistant tuberculosis is more of a problem in developing countries than in the United States. Regardless, numbers continue to increase as antibiotics stop working. Garlic extract to the rescue, as allium sativum is shown to kill the bacteria and the infection.

Reduces High Blood Pressure/Hypertension

Here are some facts about high blood pressure from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

• About 45 percent of Americans have high blood pressure.
• Over 1,000 people die every day with hypertension listed as a primary or contributing cause.
• High blood pressure increases your chances of stroke and heart disease.
• Less than 25 percent of people with hypertension have it under control.
• The cost of high blood pressure in the U.S. each year? Over $100 billion.

The good news? Garlic has been shown to regulate blood pressure levels in those at risk or diagnosed with hypertension.

A search for randomized controlled trials brought up two original studies conducted on hypertension patients. In both studies, they showed specific doses of garlic powder lowered both systolic and diastolic high blood pressure.

Another study used aged garlic extract in capsules and divided 79 patients into three groups. The groups taking the highest doses (2 capsules/12 weeks and 4 capsules/8 weeks) showed a significant reduction in systolic readings.

This meta-analysis includes 20 trials and confirms garlic’s antihypertensive activity, providing a decrease in peripheral vascular resistance. It also mentions garlic’s ability to reduce the duration and severity of respiratory illnesses and lowering LDL and total cholesterol in trials.

Researchers also compared wild to cultivated garlic to see which would work better to lower blood pressure in rats. They found that wild garlic with the higher allicin content worked the best, while cultivated low allicin garlic was least effective.

Prevents Cardiovascular Disease

As mentioned previously, high blood pressure and cholesterol are precursors for cardiovascular diseases and contribute to increased mortality rates.

Though some studies referenced are inconclusive on garlic’s cardiovascular protection, this one suggests it’s likely because of a reduction in HBP and cholesterol.

This study followed 65 intermediate-risk patients for a year to determine the longer-term effects of garlic supplementation. At the end of the 12 months, the garlic extract group (including other supplements) showed greatly improved:

• Coronary artery calcium
• Total and LDL (bad) cholesterol (reduced)
• HDL (good) cholesterol (increased)
• Increased immunity and antibodies

Another meta-analysis found that taking garlic for at least two months reduced the risk of coronary events by 38 percent. 

An umbrella review of various databases from 1966 to 2015 also found high correlations between garlic and lower risk of cardiac events.

It seems bioactive components in garlic, especially S-allyl cysteine and allicin, provide antihypertensive effects on the body. The best thing about taking garlic for various health concerns is the lack of side effects. 

Boosts the Immune System

With all the benefits garlic has to offer, is it a surprise that it can boost the immune system?

Aged garlic extract (AGE) and garlic oil have been cited in several studies for their oxidative power. One even suggests that garlic can improve brain cell damage responsible for Alzheimer’s disease.

Garlic keeps cell integrity intact, repairing damage caused by free radicals and external damage (environmental). It has chemopreventive strategies, is antimutagenic, and has antiproliferative properties. 

Regular garlic consumption can keep you healthy and help slow down the aging process. Cancer prevention by killing cancer cells has also been found in garlic allium compounds.

Garlic Immunity Recipe

One way to age garlic is to ferment it in honey. For this, you’ll need at least one head of garlic and raw honey.

Using local raw honey is best; it can help with sinus and allergy issues and is antimicrobial and antibacterial.

• Remove each clove of garlic from the head along with the paper husk. 
• Cut the tip off each clove and put them in a mason jar with a tight-fitting lid.
• Cover the garlic with honey, being sure to leave at least an inch of headspace in the jar.
• Seal and put in a cool, dark location in your kitchen.
• The next day, open the jar to let it burp (release gases) and shake or stir the honey.
• Repeat this process every other day for at least a month.

The longer the fermented garlic sits, the better. Let it do its thing for at least two months before use. 

This recipe will keep indefinitely as long as it stays sealed and no water is introduced, which will encourage mold growth. If this happens, you must throw it out.

If you see bubbles, that’s a great sign the ferment is working. When you’re ready for use, eat one garlic clove daily for immune support, more if you’re under the weather. The honey can also be drizzled on finished foods before eating (heating it kills the beneficial properties).

Increase Life Expectancy

Do you really think garlic can help you live longer? Well, depending on how much you consume over your lifetime, it is possible.

This study followed over 27,000 Chinese elders from 23 different provinces from 1998 to 2011. What they found is the people who consumed garlic regularly had a lower all-cause mortality risk than those who didn’t. 

Regular consumption of garlic was at least one to four times weekly or more. By the end of the study, over 22,000 participants had died, having been at least 80-years-old when it began.

Final Thoughts

We get it. Not everyone likes the smell, taste, or bite of garlic, especially in raw form. But now that you’ve seen some of the health benefits, are you willing to try it?

The fermented garlic recipe is a great way to get the benefits without the bite. The honey makes the garlic taste almost like candy. Don’t believe us? Try it for yourself!

Did you know garlic powder is an ingredient in our superfood blend, Vintage Bloom™? Get an additional boost to your immunity by adding in a daily dose of this tasty supplement. It can be added to any liquid beverage, including smoothies and shakes.

What do you think about all the health benefits that garlic can provide? If you haven’t been eating garlic regularly before reading this, do you plan to now?