How Not to Age: The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier as You Get Older

by Michael Greger

What happens if you cook it? If you compare raw chopped garlic to garlic that’s been cooked in various methods, you can see dramatic drops in one of the purported active ingredients. You can get a 66 percent drop when you boil it for six minutes, 94 percent less when you simmer it for fifteen minutes, and a full 100 percent wipeout from just one minute of stir-frying it.4525 What about roasted garlic? Surprisingly, even though roasting is done at temperatures hotter than boiling water, it preserves about twice as much. Raw garlic has the most, but it may be easier for some to eat two or three cloves of cooked garlic than the equivalent (half a clove) of raw.