by Rebecca Rupp
Writer and gardener John Evelyn—who, in 1699, wrote an
entire book on salads (Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets)— was not a fan of
garlic. Spaniards and Italians, he noted snidely, ate the stuff with almost
everything, but its “intolerable Rankness” made it a no-no for the respectable
British veggie eater. “To be sure,” he added, “’tis not for Ladies Palats, nor
those who court them.”
“Garlicks, tho’ used by the
French,” wrote Amelia Simmons in American Cookery in 1796, “are better adapted
to use in medicine than cookery.” Mrs. Isabella Beeton—author of the 1859
best-selling Book of Household Management, a tome that discoursed on everything
from the proper use of the pickle fork to the vascular system of plants—deemed
garlic flatly offensive. “Garlic-eater,” from Elizabethan times, was a common
pejorative for the vulgar, the lower-class, and the non-British. Shakespeare
made fun of them. (See “Oldest Evidence of Cooking With Spices“)
As late as the Second World War,
Charles Fraser-Smith—spymaster for British intelligence and the inspiration for
Q, the genius gadgeteer of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels— had to deal with
the home-front unpopularity of garlic. Along with cameras concealed in
cigarette lighters, shoelaces that doubled as saws, and hollow buttons
concealing maps, Fraser-Smith came up with garlic-impregnated chocolate bars—to
be consumed by those dropped behind enemy lines in France and Spain to ensure that
they’d smell like natives.
For all who wouldn’t touch garlic
with a ten-foot pole, however, history lists as many who adored it. The ancient
Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Chinese all ate it. Folklore credited it with
the ability to fend off witches, demons, vampires, and (in Korea) tigers. Pliny
the Elder, in his monumental 37-volume Natural History—a series of books
purporting to hold all the knowledge in the world—listed garlic as a specific
for 61 different afflictions, among them scorpion bites, tapeworms, and
epilepsy. (It also, he noted, acts as an aphrodisiac if taken with fresh
coriander in a glass of wine.) Later sources touted it as a cure for baldness,
the Black Plague, influenza, and the common cold. (See “Six Ways to Stop a
Vampire“)
There’s some truth behind garlic’s
gaudy medical reputation. As early as 1858, French biologist Louis Pasteur
showed that garlic juice had anti-bacterial activity. It was used with mild
success as a battlefield antiseptic in both World Wars I and II, in the last of
which it picked up the encouraging nickname “Russian penicillin.” Tested, its
bacteria-killing capabilities turn out to be due to allicin, the sulfurous
substance that gives garlic its distinctive and powerful smell. In the growing
garlic plant, allicin functions to ward off invasive pests.
Which brings us to cows.
Cows, of which there are some 1.5
billion on the planet, are greenhouse-gas machines. Cows digest their food with
the help of stomach bacteria in a process known as enteric fermentation. A side
effect of this is the production of methane, a gas some 23 times more potent
than carbon dioxide in terms of trapping heat and exacerbating global warming.
The average cow produces somewhere
between 200 and 500 liters of methane a day. This happens primarily through
belching, though there’s also a certain amount of socially incorrect activity
at the other end too. Between these behaviors, in terms of pollution, a single
friendly cow is far worse than an SUV.
Cows, according to the EPA, are top
of the charts in terms of methane emissions, outpacing such sinners as the
natural gas industry, landfills, and coal mining. The problem is worrisome
enough that the Obama White House is making it the target of a climate action
initiative. A snarky editorial called this “Apocalypse Cow.”
The solution to the problem,
however, may be in the works, and it may be as simple as—wait for it—garlic. A
three-year study at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth has shown that when
cows are fed garlic, methane production is cut in half. According to Jamie
Newbold, leader of the Welsh research project, allicin from garlic kills off
the methane-generating bacteria in the cows’ substantial bellies, thus creating
both politer and more eco-responsible cows. (See “Can Dung Beetles Battle
Global Warming?“)
Garlic-eating these days—luckily
for dozens of cuisines—is a perfectly delightful practice, and we get to do it
without being banned from temples, court, the stage, school, and parties. And
if done by cows—well, it might just play a part in saving the world.
This story is part of National Geographic’s special
eight-month “Future of Food” series.
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