Farmers Market Garlic could save your life

Just a reminder: to save your life, make every effort now to stock up on as much local farm grown garlic as you dare. There's plenty of it at farmer's markets as September ends, all sorts of varieties with varying degrees of hardiness. Any of them will keep you going strong.

Remember, garlic is a vital medicine for the body. Ancient people knew that; they said it dispelled demons, which probably meant parasites and bacteria that made people abnormal.  That smelly odor that puts some people off comes from the sulfur in it and sulfur is a wonder drug. Garlic can clean your lungs, kill bad bacteria in your gut and act as an antioxidant.  Here's a tidbit from a 2007 New York Times story, if you don't believe me:

"...researchers show that eating garlic appears to boost our natural supply of hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is actually poisonous at high concentrations — it’s the same noxious byproduct of oil refining that smells like rotten eggs. But the body makes its own supply of the stuff, which acts as an antioxidant and transmits cellular signals that relax blood vessels and increase blood flow.

"In the latest study, performed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, researchers extracted juice from supermarket garlic and added small amounts to human red blood cells. The cells immediately began emitting hydrogen sulfide, the scientists found. The power to boost hydrogen sulfide production may help explain why a garlic-rich diet appears to protect against various cancers, including breast, prostate and colon cancer, say the study authors. Higher hydrogen sulfide might also protect the heart, according to other experts. Although garlic has not consistently been shown to lower cholesterol levels, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine earlier this year found that injecting hydrogen sulfide into mice almost completely prevented the damage to heart muscle caused by a heart attack."

So don't fool around taking chances with the garlic you put into your body. You want as much locally grown nonpoisonous garlic as you can store. Don't go into the supermarket for any. Most garlic sold in big stores is now coming from China and much of it can be seriously toxic. If it isn't laced with all the heavy metals dumped into the soil--and remember, bulb crops like garlic grow down inside the soil where they soak up everything in it, it could be thoroughly laced with lethal pesticide residues or other chemical fertilizer residues the Chinese so liberally pump out without caring about the side effects. 

Worse, it's been revealed that some Chinese vendors marinate their garlic in formaldehyde to turn it bright white, thinking that's what we think garlic should look like. So if you're not keen on eating poison like formaldehyde, and have to buy garlic outside a trustworthy farmers market, go for garlic that's streaked with gray or that dull red. If it has a little local dirt on it, that's a good sign it could even be local and thus probably safe.

Another seriously good reason to shop at farmers' markets where you shake the hand that feeds you.