Study: Garlic Stinks At Reducing Cholesterol

A new study found that garlic is no good at reducing cholesterol.

Almost 200 adults given the equivalent of an average clove of garlic a day, six days a week for six months, saw no reduction. All the adults had moderately elevated levels of so-called "bad" cholesterol.

Forty-nine participants were randomly assigned to receive raw garlic, 47 to take a powdered garlic supplement, 48 to take an aged garlic supplement and 48 to take a dummy pill.

More than half the people in the study who were eating raw garlic reported bad breath and body odor.

The study appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine. But the Stanford University Medical School researchers who conducted the study are not completely writing off garlic as a potential cholesterol treatment. One scientist said garlic might work in bigger doses or in people with higher cholesterol.

Crushing garlic triggers the formation of a compound known as allicin, which has been shown to prevent the formation of cholesterol in the laboratory, the researchers wrote. However, clinical trials on garlic as a cholesterol-lowering agent in humans have been inconsistent.

"Garlic is one of the top-selling dietary supplements in the United States, in part because familiarity with garlic as a food gives consumers confidence that garlic supplements are safe. In general, they probably are," researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York wrote in an accompanying editorial. "Do they prevent cardiovascular disease? The jury is still out."