Theeuroblog.com – Health, Food and Travel

In test tube studies garlic has been found to have antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal activity. However, these actions are less clear in humans. Garlic is also claimed to help prevent heart disease (including atherosclerosis, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure) and cancer. Animal studies, and some early investigational studies in humans, have suggested possible cardiovascular benefits of garlic. A Czech study found that garlic supplementation reduced accumulation of cholesterol on the vascular walls of animals. Another study had similar results, with garlic supplementation significantly reducing aortic plaque deposits of cholesterol-fed rabbits.[18] Another study showed that supplementation with garlic extract inhibited vascular calcification in human patients with high blood cholesterol. The known vasodilative effect of garlic is possibly caused by catabolism of garlic-derived polysulfides to hydrogen sulfide in red blood cells, a reaction that is dependent on reduced thiols in or on the RBC membrane. Hydrogen sulfide is an endogenous cardioprotective vascular cell-signaling molecule.

Although these studies showed protective vascular changes in garlic-fed subjects, a randomized clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2007 found that the consumption of garlic in any form did not reduce blood cholesterol levels in patients with moderately high baseline cholesterol levels.

According to the Heart.org, “despite decades of research suggesting that garlic can improve cholesterol profiles, a new NIH-funded trial found absolutely no effects of raw garlic or garlic supplements on LDL, HDL, or triglycerides… The findings underscore the hazards of meta-analyses made up of small, flawed studies and the value of rigorously studying popular herbal remedies.”

In 2007, the BBC reported that Allium sativum may have other beneficial properties, such as preventing and fighting the common cold. This assertion has the backing of long tradition in herbal medicine, which has used garlic for hoarseness and coughs. The Cherokee also used it as an expectorant for coughs and croup.

Allium sativum has been found to reduce platelet aggregation and hyperlipidemia.

Garlic is also alleged to help regulate blood sugar levels. Regular and prolonged use of therapeutic amounts of aged garlic extracts lower blood homocysteine levels and has shown to prevent some complications of diabetes mellitus. People taking insulin should not consume medicinal amounts of garlic without consulting a physician.

In 1858, Louis Pasteur observed garlic’s antibacterial activity, and it was used as an antiseptic to prevent gangrene during World War I and World War II. More recently, it has been found from a clinical trial that a mouthwash containing 2.5% fresh garlic shows good antimicrobial activity, although the majority of the participants reported an unpleasant taste and halitosis.

In modern naturopathy, garlic is used as a treatment for intestinal worms and other intestinal parasites, both orally and as an anal suppository. Garlic cloves are used as a remedy for infections (especially chest problems), digestive disorders, and fungal infections such as thrush.

Garlic has been used reasonably successfully in AIDS patients to treat cryptosporidium in an uncontrolled study in China. It has also been used by at least one AIDS patient to treat toxoplasmosis, another protozoal disease.

Garlic supplementation in rats, along with a high protein diet, has been shown to boost testosterone levels. more info here

Do you grow garlic in your garden? Do you eat garlic too? Don’t you know that garlic is also a source of Vitamic C? It also claimed to help prevent heart disease. Garlic is always present in our kitchen. Mrs. Author of this blog always love to use garlic seasoning every time she cook food. That is maybe the reasons why most of her friends are wondering why her food always taste good. Here are some information you need to know about garlic.

Allium sativum, commonly known as garlic, is a species in the onion family Alliaceae. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, and chive. Garlic has been used throughout history for both culinary and medicinal purposes. The garlic plant’s bulb is the most commonly used part of the plant. With the exception of the single clove types, the bulb is divided into numerous fleshy sections called cloves. The cloves are used for cloning, consumption (raw or cooked), or for medicinal purposes, and have a characteristic pungent, spicy flavor that mellows and sweetens considerably with cooking. The leaves, and flowers (bulbils) on the head (spathe) are also edible and are most often consumed while immature and still tender.
CULINARY USES OF GARLIC

Garlic is widely used around the world for its pungent flavor as a seasoning or condiment. It is a fundamental component in many or most dishes of various regions, including eastern Asia, south Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, northern Africa, southern Europe, and parts of South and Central America. The flavour varies in intensity and aroma with the different cooking methods. It is often paired with onion, tomato, or ginger. The parchment-like skin is much like the skin of an onion and is typically removed before using in raw or cooked form. An alternative is to cut the top off the bulb, coat the cloves by dribbling olive oil (or other oil-based seasoning) over them, and roast them in an oven. The garlic softens and can be extracted from the cloves by squeezing the (root) end of the bulb, or individually by squeezing one end of the clove. In Korea, heads of garlic are fermented at high temperature; the resulting product, called black garlic, is sweet and syrupy, and is now being sold in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

Garlic may be applied to breads to create a variety of classic dishes such as garlic bread, garlic toast, bruschetta, crostini and canapé. more here

Vitamin A can be found in two principal forms in foods:

* retinol, the form of vitamin A absorbed when eating animal food sources, is a yellow, fat-soluble substance. Since the pure alcohol form is unstable, the vitamin is found in tissues in a form of retinyl ester. It is also commercially produced and administered as esters such as retinyl acetate or palmitate.

* The carotenes alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, gamma-carotene; and the xanthophyll beta-cryptoxanthin (all of which contain beta-ionone rings), but no other carotenoids, function as vitamin A in herbivores and omnivore animals, which possess the enzyme required to convert these compounds to retinal. Carnivores in general are poor converters of ionine-containg carotenoids, and pure carnivores such as cats and ferets lack beta-carotene 15,15′-monooxygenase and cannot convert any carotenoids to retinal (resulting in none of the carotenoids being forms of vitamin A for these species). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_A

Vitamin A is a vitamin which is needed by the retina of the eye in the form of a specific metabolite, the light-absorbing molecule retinal. This molecule is absolutely necessary for both scotopic and color vision. Vitamin A also functions in a very different role, as an irreversibly oxidized form retinoic acid, which is an important hormone-like growth factor for epithelial and other cells.

In foods of animal origin, the major form of vitamin A is an ester, primarily retinyl palmitate, which is converted to an alcohol (retinol) in the small intestine. The retinol form functions as a storage form of the vitamin, and can be converted to and from its visually active aldehyde form, retinal. The associated acid (retinoic acid), a metabolite which can be irreversibly synthesized from vitamin A, has only partial vitamin A activity, and does not function in the retina or some essential parts of the reproductive system.

All forms of vitamin A have a beta-ionone ring to which an isoprenoid chain is attached, called a retinyl group. This structure is essential for vitamin activity. The orange pigment of carrots – beta-carotene – can be represented as two connected retinyl groups, which are used in the body to contribute to vitamin A levels. Alpha-carotene and gamma-carotene also have a single retinyl group which give them some vitamin activity. None of the other carotenes have vitamin activity. The carotenoid beta-cryptoxanthin possesses an ionone group and has vitamin activity in humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_A

Vitamin C or L-ascorbic acid is an essential nutrient for humans and certain other animal species, in which it functions as a vitamin. Ascorbate (an ion of ascorbic acid) is required for a range of essential metabolic reactions in all animals and plants. It is made internally by almost all organisms; notable mammalian group exceptions are most or all of the order chiroptera (bats), and one of the two major primate suborders, the Anthropoidea (Haplorrhini) (tarsiers, monkeys and apes, including mankind). Ascorbic acid is also not synthesized by guinea pigs and some species of birds and fish. All species that do not synthesize ascorbate require it in the diet. Deficiency in this vitamin causes the disease scurvy in humans. It is also widely used as a food additive.

The pharmacophore of vitamin C is the ascorbate ion. In living organisms, ascorbate is an anti-oxidant, since it protects the body against oxidative stress, and is a cofactor in at least eight enzymatic reactions, including several collagen synthesis reactions that cause the most severe symptoms of scurvy when they are dysfunctional.

Scurvy has been known since ancient times. People in many parts of the world assumed it was caused by a lack of fresh plant foods. The British Navy started giving sailors lime juice to prevent scurvy in 1795.[7] Ascorbic acid was finally isolated in 1932 and commercially synthesized in 1934. The uses and recommended daily intake of vitamin C are matters of on-going debate, with RDI ranging from 45 to 95 mg/day. Proponents of megadosage propose from 200 mg to more than 2000 mg/day. The fraction of vitamin C in the diet that is absorbed and the rate at which the excess is eliminated from the body vary strongly with the dose. continue reading here

Ascorbic acid is a sugar acid with antioxidant properties. Its appearance is white to light-yellow crystals or powder, and it is water-soluble. One form of ascorbic acid is commonly known as vitamin C. The name is derived from a- (meaning “no”) and scorbutus (scurvy), the disease caused by a deficiency of vitamin C. In 1937 the Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to Walter Haworth for his work in determining the structure of ascorbic acid (shared with Paul Karrer, who received his award for work on vitamins), and the prize for Physiology or Medicine that year went to Albert Szent-Györgyi for his studies of the biological functions of L-ascorbic acid. At the time of its discovery in the 1920s, it was called hexuronic acid by some researchers.

USES
Ascorbic acid is easily oxidized and so is used as a reductant in photographic developer solutions (among others) and as a preservative.

Exposure to oxygen, metals, light, or heat destroys ascorbic acid, so it must be stored in a dark, cold, and non-metallic container.

The L-enantiomer of ascorbic acid is also known as vitamin C. The name “ascorbic” comes from its property of preventing and curing scurvy. Primates, including humans, and a few other species in all divisions of the animal kingdom, notably the guinea pig, have lost the ability to synthesize ascorbic acid, and must obtain it in their food.

Ascorbic acid and its sodium, potassium, and calcium salts are commonly used as antioxidant food additives. These compounds are water-soluble and thus cannot protect fats from oxidation: For this purpose, the fat-soluble esters of ascorbic acid with long-chain fatty acids (ascorbyl palmitate or ascorbyl stearate) can be used as food antioxidants. Eighty percent of the world’s supply of ascorbic acid is produced in China.
The relevant European food additive E numbers are

1. E300 ascorbic acid,
2. E301 sodium ascorbate,
3. E302 calcium ascorbate,
4. E303 potassium ascorbate,
5. E304 fatty acid esters of ascorbic acid (i) ascorbyl palmitate (ii) ascorbyl stearate.

In plastic manufacturing, ascorbic acid can be used to assemble molecular chains more quickly and with less waste than traditional synthesis methods.

Antioxidant Mechanism:

Ascorbate acts as an antioxidant by being available for energetically favourable oxidation. Many oxidants (typically, reactive oxygen species) such as the hydroxyl radical (formed from hydrogen peroxide), contain an unpaired electron, and, thus, are highly reactive and damaging to humans and plants at the molecular level. This is due to their interaction with nucleic acid, proteins, and lipids. Reactive oxygen species oxidize (take electrons from) ascorbate first to monodehydroascorbate and then dehydroascorbate. The reactive oxygen species are reduced to water, while the oxidized forms of ascorbate are relatively stable and unreactive, and do not cause cellular damage.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascorbic_acid

Have you eaten one of the famous German food. This is the Schweinebraten. It is a baked pork with spices like cumin, coriander, marjoram and garlic. Some also used other spices according to their taste and style. I learned better cooking this German food from a friend who owned a Gasthaus or restaurant. You can also buy ready made Scheinebraten powder for tasting. In German, it is usually eaten with potato dumplings and Sauerkraut. Here is yummy a Schweinebraten we prepared last weekend. I guess we forget the word diet when we eat this.

Mr. and Mrs. Authors of this site love to eat mango fruit. In fact we are preparing mango salad with mozzarella in our kitchen. I am looking for that salad photo in our fine but instead I only found a photo or mangoes. Since we are not experts, I tried to search the nutritional value of mango online. Here it is.Try to eat delicious mango when you can.

Mango is rich in a variety of phytochemicals and nutrients that qualify it as a model “superfruit”, a term used to highlight potential health value of certain edible fruits. The fruit is high in prebiotic dietary fiber, vitamin C, polyphenols and provitamin A carotenoids.

Mango contains essential vitamins and dietary minerals. The antioxidant vitamins A, C and E comprise 25%, 76% and 9% of the Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) in a 165 g serving. Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine, 11% DRI), vitamin K (9% DRI), other B vitamins and essential nutrients such as potassium, copper and 17 amino acids are at good levels. Mango peel and pulp contain other phytonutrients, such as the pigment antioxidants – carotenoids and polyphenols – and omega-3 and -6 polyunsaturated fatty acids. more here

Mr. Author of this site love this food. Pork meatballs with tomato sauce. I wish to share the recipe next time. For now, just enjoy watching the photos here. have a great day everyone!

Schweinebraten is German delicacy. It is a pork baked in oven with some sauce made of different spices. It is usually eaten with potato dumplings. Here is a photo taken from our kitchen.