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Garlic: Looking Beyond Allicin |
Allicin
in Commercial Garlic Products
The
instability of allicin has been confirmed by various studies. One study has
shown that allicin decreased to non-detectable amounts after only six days (10)
while another study showed that all allicin was lost within a day (20 hours)
(11). When eight garlic supplements were purchased at health food stores and
allicin content in them was determined using HPLC, the most sensitive method for
detecting this compound, none of them were found to contain even a detectable
amount of allicin (less than 1 ppm) due to the instability of allicin (1).
Since
manufacturers have begun to realize that there is no allicin in any garlic
supplement, they have started promoting "allicin potential" as a way
to claim that their products can provide allicin to the body. Generally, allicin
potential is determined by adding water to garlic products. However, the
production of allicin inside the body is very doubtful.
Alliinase,
the enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of alliin to allicin, is irreversibly
deactivated at pH 3 or below, an acidic environment typically found in the
stomach (12). No allicin was produced when pH 2 and pH 3 citrate buffers were
added to garlic powder.
Simulated
stomach fluids (SGF) and simulated intestinal fluids (SIF) have commonly been
used to determine the effects of typical digestion on nutrients or chemicals in
question. Compared to the amount of
allicin produced by garlic powder upon water contact, only about 4% of that
amount of allicin was produced when the garlic powder was incubated in SGF, and
about 60% when incubated in SIF. Moreover, the subsequent incubation of garlic
powder in SGF and SIF reduced the allicin production to about 1 % of its
production in water (1).
These
recent findings indicate that only insignificant amounts of allicin can be
produced inside the body.
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