06/11/2025
Smelly breath may be worth it !
For cancer prevention, the evidence points to a diet centered around plant foods with minimal animal products. Many foods included on our Daily Dozen checklist, including berries, leafy green vegetables, beans, flaxseeds, garlic, onions, turmeric, and green tea, may be particularly beneficial for cancer prevention. Most top cancer-preventing vegetables belong to one of two superfood families: cruciferous veggies, such as broccoli, kale, cauliflower, and cabbage, and the allium veg, including garlic, leeks, and onions.
Eat one big clove’s worth of crushed raw garlic, and, within hours, you get an alteration of the expression of your genes related to anti-cancer immunity. Does this then translate into lower cancer risk?
Ten population studies put together found that those who reported higher consumption of garlic had half the risk of stomach cancer. What is considered to be a high intake of garlic? In each study, it was different—from consuming garlic a few times a month to every day. Regardless, those who ate more garlic appeared to have lower cancer rates than those who ate less, suggesting a protective effect. Given that stomach cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related death around the world, garlic may be a relatively cheap and accessible food to incorporate into our diet for cancer prevention.
What about garlic for heart disease prevention? Should we eat garlic raw or cooked? We've got videos on that! Check out the following resources on NutritionFacts.org to learn more and to see the study references:
"Benefits of Garlic for Fighting Cancer and the Common Cold" at https://bit.ly/3x6TP29
"Benefits of Garlic Powder for Heart Disease" at https://bit.ly/2VLR45h
"Blocking the Cancer Metastasis Enzyme MMP-9 with Beans and Chickpeas" at https://bit.ly/3z11W3n
Garlic topic page at https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/garlic/
PMIDs: 29461280, 26423732, 25411831
doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2008.05.084