My gut says a bunch of researchers who really like garlic and felt bad about the bad breath started this myth. Ok, maybe not:
Eating garlic raw or in supplement form does not lower “bad” cholesterol levels, despite widespread health claims for the pungent plant bulb, researchers said on Monday.
“It just doesn’t work,” said Christopher Gardner of the Stanford Prevention Research Center in California. “There’s no shortcut. You achieve good health through eating healthy food. There isn’t a pill or an herb you can take to counteract an unhealthy diet.”
Some of the claims that garlic lowers cholesterol emanate from laboratory experiments but there is no proof it reacts in the body the same way, Gardner wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine. In test tubes and some animal subjects the compound released from crushed garlic, allicin, has been found to inhibit the synthesis of cholesterol.
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