Of Gods and Garlic

Ahhhhhh.  The wondrous scent of roasted Allium sativum, aka garlic, on an open flame, seared until blackened and then crushed and added to a succulent steak makes my mouth water.

I love cooking with garlic in all its forms: fresh, dehydrated, powdered, liquid—I have them all.  I also love adding them to recipes that are not usually associated with garlic, such as macaroni and cheese (my mac and cheese tend to be on the avant-garde side) or hamburgers.

It’s not just the taste factor though.  Health benefits abound.  Looking through its properties, it is almost like a medicine in a pod, at least as long as you chop, crush, or chew it, because that’s how the sulfur compounds, where most of the health benefits are derived, are released.

Health Benefits

Let me count the ways and health benefits that have already been scientifically observed:

• Combats Sickness, Including the Common Cold
• Reduces Blood Pressure
• Improves Cholesterol Levels, Which May Lower the Risk of Heart Disease
• Contains Antioxidants That May Help Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia
• Detoxifies Heavy Metals in the Body
• May Improve Bone Health

Makes me wanna take out my chef knife and make something quick, garlicky, and yummy!  Like this french baguette garlic bread that’s to die for!

Garlic and Non-humans

I love garlic—but that’s because I’m human.

Non-humans, such as my dogs, don’t find garlic to be that great of a deal.  In fact, non-humans could die if they eat too much garlic (or any other alliums such as leeks, chives, onions, shallots, and scallions, to be precise).

How much is too much?  A full pod?  I don’t know.  I never want to test this on any non-humans.  I love my dogs too much and would never knowingly cause them distress, nor would I knowingly cause any other people who cannot eat alliums, any physical distress.

That said, I was curious as to the active ingredient in garlic that causes death and/or distress in non-humans, so I did some very basic digging into the chemistry behind garlic, and this is what I found.

Stay with me here.  There is a good reason why I’m showing you chemical symbols.

Garlic Chemistry

Garlic contains a compound called n-propyl disulfide, as well as small amounts of thiosulphate which, when taken in LARGE amounts, target the red blood cells and cause them to rupture.

That’s because non-human blood cells have more areas on their surface that oxidizing agents (n-propyl disulfide and thiosulphate) can attach to, using the two sulfur atoms.

When the body sees all these attachments on the blood cells, it looks like the cells are being attacked by something similar to a virus or a bacteria. This attachment is recognized by the body as a foreign invader, and in the attempt to remove this invader, the body also destroys the red blood cell.

This process of killing red blood cells is called hemolysis, which then creates Heinz bodies and the body will reject these cells from the bloodstream.

Hmmmm…I should define Heinz bodies.

Heinz bodies are clumps of denatured hemoglobin resulting from exposure to high oxidant levels that oxidize sulfhydryl groups on adjacent molecules, joining them with a covalent disulfide bond. ~ Science Direct.  

All that fancy talk just means that they are clumps of dead red blood cells that have been killed by the chemicals from garlic and other allium type foods.  Since they are dead, the body tosses them out as waste products.

That’s why you have to be really vigilant if your dog poops black feces.  It could mean internal bleeding or massive amounts of blood cells that have died.  Take the dog to the vet for a check out if that is the case.

All this may sound cool and hunky dory, but what does any of this have to do with gods?

The garlic gods Connection

Have you ever notice that there are certain groups of—I’m going to call them beings, that will not touch garlic, or any other alliums at all?

This group includes the entire England royal family, the Jains, certain Buddhist monks, Hindus, Anunnaki gods, and of course, every single vampire we have ever known and loved.

Could it be that they all have the same issues in common?  Could it be that they, like many animals, cannot eat alliums???  I say allium because it’s not just garlic they stay away from.  They also do not eat onions and leeks and scallions because this stuff will give them a very hard time, physically.

Could it be that they are genetically the same race?  Might they be humans, but slightly different than Homo sapiens sapiens?  Or are they just a bit inbred?

To answer this question in more detail, I needed to do some digging.  Since I know next to nothing about the Queen of England and her extended family, nor do I know of any Hindi off-hand, and there are no vampires left alive (that we know of), I decided to go back to my culture and Việt texts to find out the ancient customs of old, which had to do with the ancient Buddhas.

Here is what I found

The five pungent spices which are forbidden for some Buddhist sects in China and Vietnam are:

• Onions
• Garlic
• Chives
• Scallions
• Leeks

It’s also forbidden to the Jains and the Hindus for pretty much the same reason.  The reason behind this is that the five pungent spices are attributed to anger when consumed raw, and passion, when cooked.  Buddhists also contribute their odors as repellent to gods, not to mention it supposedly attracts hungry ghosts and demons.

Well, I will be the first to tell you that if this is true, I’ve got hungry ghosts and demons all over my house, because I cook just about every day, and there is hardly ever a meal where I don’t add onions, or garlic, or scallions, or leeks.  Sometimes I add combinations of all of them!

I can think of many other far more pungent plants and fruits than alliums.  I also know that garlic does nothing as an aphrodisiac so that idea is completely off-base.  In fact, capsicums are more likely to make a person hot than any alliums ever could.

Lucky for me, I’m a Taoist, and we Taoists believe that alliums are good for the health.  They don’t attract any hungry ghosts either…just hungry people.  Any Taoists out there have an objection to this, please speak up.  I am always happy to learn more about the dos and don’ts of Taoism.

My only problem is, I’m not that Taoie when it comes to alliums, meaning I’m not as balanced as I could be.  I put way too much garlic and onions in some of my food.  Pastas get a good amount.  So does cajun/creole food.  For sure, Vietnamese food gets quite a bit of it.  Chinese food gets a ton of alliums too, but I only know how to make Cantonese dishes since it’s very similar to Vietnamese food in many ways.  I even sneak it into Mexican food when I make certain fajitas and chili.

Garlic Conclusion

So after having dug through various written documents both old and new on the eating habits of the secular kind, I have come to the crazy conclusion that the group of Hindu gods and various Buddhas of that time period (Siddhartha Gautama was a prince of the Sakya clan), not to mention all the European royalties, are the same group of people with very similar lineage.

They are genetically similar, and because of that, they try to maintain the genetic god lines by only marrying each other.

After thousands of years, this caused quite a bit of inbreeding, which may be the reason why their blood reacts differently to allium than regular humans do.  Perhaps those people who have such an allium reaction are genetic throw-backs to those groups of people.

As for the regular people who follow these gods with allium-aversions, even though they physically are able to eat alliums, they abstained because their gods and/or spiritual leaders could not eat them, and after thousands of years, it became a customary thing to do.

The reasons given for abstinence of alliums really do not hold up scientifically, so I can only guess that they were given as excuses so that followers would not inadvertently sneak alliums into food served to the gods and Buddhas.

As for the modern-day allium abstainers—look for people who have blood with a lot of sulfhydryl receptors on their blood cells and there is a good chance you will find direct descendants of the ancient gods themselves.

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