Garlic

This is also mentioned in the book of Bernard Ward: "Healing Foods from the Bible." It's glorious garlic! It is one of the world's oldest healing foods. It was being used both as a favorite food and as a powerful medicine centuries before Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt and into the wilderness.

Garlic and its cousin onion were regarded highly for both health-giving and magical qualities in ancient cultures. Garlic was one of the first foods to be deliberately cultivated, although wild varieties grew in abudance. Evidence of its healing powers is detailed in 4,000 -year- old records from the ancient kingdom of Sumeria. Depictions of garlic bulbs have been discovered on the walls of Egyptian tombs that back to 3200 B.C.- centuries before Joseph and his brothers settled in Egypt.

During the same period, ancient records reveal that garlic was the principal ingredient in many remedies that Egyptian healers prescribed as cures for headaches, sore throats and other complaints. Research suggests that garlic may help protect against heart disease and stroke by lowering blood pressure. It contains allylic sulfides, which may neutralize carcinogens. In fact, garlic has been linked to lower rates of stomach cancer too.

Japanese scientists have distilled an antibiotic medication called Kyolic from raw garlic. Because it was used so commonly as an antibiotic by Russian army medics during World War II, it became known throughout all of Europe as the "Russian penicillin." An astonishing 500 tons of garlic were trucked into Moscow to combat one influenza epidemic in the 1950s. European doctors still prescribed garlic to ward off colds, pneumonia, whooping cough and a wide array of intestinal disorders.

Whether cooked, raw or in extract form, garlic may be one of the most potent natural healing foods we have. The ancient people of the Bible knew that basic fact of life while some of our scientists are just rediscovering it.