by Nick Jacobs

Dad hated garlic. Seriously, an Italian who HATED garlic was like a Catholic who hated incense. Well, okay, maybe that’s a bad comparison. It always had seemed strange to me that he hated garlic. As it turns out, dad hated garlic because his mother made him wear a little bag around his neck to ward off vampires and other evil things like sore throats, and that bag contained a clove of garlic.

Now, Mom was English and hated garlic, but my English food experience would tell me that, no offense, the English hate most spices. So, when I got married at the tender age of 21, one of my first discoveries was that my in-laws had 13 containers of garlic salt in their spice rack, that the ice cream in their freezer tasted like garlic as did the jello, the milk and the bread. In fact, because this was the only flavor he had ever known, my son once sent a suggestion to Ben and Jerry to make garlic flavored ice cream with chunks of kielbasa for Orthodox Easter.

So, not long into the relationship, I developed high blood pressure and high cholesterol, which is another story. Actually, one part of the story was, when I met my first Bishop, I said to him, “Bishop, that’s a tough job. Do you have high blood pressure and high cholesterol?” He smiled and said, “No, I give high blood pressure and high cholesterol.” Some people are carriers of these maladies. Anyway, back to the story.

The Ukrainian side of the new family always treated high blood pressure and cholesterol with garlic. In fact, Uncle Mike used to put cloves of garlic between his toes when he slept at night. Mike never had high blood pressure or cholesterol because no one would get close enough to him to have contact of any kind. Consequently, he was exposed to very little conflict.

Maybe because of Dad, garlic was not one of my favorite sources of medication, and when garlic tablets became the rage, I avoided them like the plague, but it kept appearing in my food. In fact, I think it gave me high blood pressure and high cholesterol because, as a teacher and then a business person, garlic for breakfast, lunch and dinner tended to slow down my ability to make and close deals, and it usually made me mad when someone said, “Hey, eat a little garlic for breakfast today?” Granted, to my knowledge, none of the bites that I’ve experienced ever came from a vampire, but the blood pressure and cholesterol continued to climb to new heights.

Lindsey Tanner, however, has changed my life. I’m not sure if Lindsey is a guy or a girl, but I assume she’s female, and, I have to admit that I love her. Lindsey wrote an article a few weeks back for the Associated Press entitled: “Study: Garlic doesn’t lower cholesterol” where she reports that the quintessential study is complete. It was performed on people who ate it in sandwiches, pills, powder and raw, and the report was that it had NO EFFECT on cholesterol. None. Zero.

Break out the horns and hats. It’s over. My forced consumption of garlic in all forms is finally going to be OVER.

Christopher Gardner said of the study that “If garlic was going to have a chance to work, it would have worked in this study.” For you doubting Thomas types, the study appeared in the “Archives of Internal Medicine.”They must have had a lot of pressure, however, because “The Archives” said in an editorial that “the jury is still out” on the question of cardiovascular disease. Ahhhhh.