Most people are aware that eating garlic can help in the fight against heart disease and perhaps even cancer. But it may also help in losing weight! Scientists working at a research institute in Israel, the Weizmann Institute of Science, have found a compound in garlic that may significantly help in the battle to lose weight.

The four-person team have found that a compound called allicin is produced when garlic is crushed. Normally, this is nature’s way for the garlic plant to protect itself from insects, parasites, fungus, and bacteria – the allicin simply kills or repels the bacteria, fungus or insects. In fact, allicin has proved to be highly potent in killing many forms of bacteria!

Allicicn, the overwhelming odour of crushed garlic that everyone is familiar with, is produced when a compound in garlic called allin is broken down by a garlic enzyme called allinase. By simply crushing garlic a chemical reaction occurs between the enzyme allinase and the compound allin to produce allicin.

The scientific team led by Dr Mirelman fed two groups of rats a high sugar diet; a diet of mainly fruit sugar. One group obviously gained weight, however, the other group were also fed allicin – the highly potent compound found in garlic – and this group did NOT gain any weight, even though they consumed the same amount of sugar This suggests that allicin – the compound found in garlic - was somehow stopping the rats from gaining extra weight. The exact reason why it prevented weight gain in the rats is unknown.

But, garlic is known to reduce blood fat levels. So the possible reason for the rats not gaining weight is that allicin binds with or dissolves blood fat, thus lowering or limiting the level of body fat.

Although similar studies have yet to be performed on humans, it’s suspected that garlic may have the same effect on humans as it did rats because garlic behaves in the same way on blood fat levels.

Read more about this study here.