Italian scientist targets garlic's smelly gene

Nature's "stinking rose" has been used to treat everything from herpes to heart disease

By Douglas Herbert, CNN.com Europe writer

LONDON (CNN) -- Egyptians revered it as a deity. The Greeks laid it at ancient crossroads to appease Hecate, the Goddess of Witches. And Homer credited its elixir-like powers with sparing Ulysses the fate of being changed into a pig by the evil sorceress Circe.

Latter-day societies have embraced it as a one-clove-fits-all panacea against less exalted afflictions, ranging from fungal infection and coughs to fever blisters and genital herpes.

Now, an Italian geneticist with a nose for a pungent research project, says he may have found the key to preserving garlic's salubrious properties -- without all the stink.

Professor Corrado Fogher, of the University of the Sacred Heart at Piacenza, believes he may have stumbled upon a way to "deodorise" the so-called "stinking rose" without sacrificing either its flavour or its potency as an herbal weapon against heart disease, high blood pressure and bacterial infection.

Fogher says he is on the brink of isolating -- and silencing -- the gene that harbours allicin, a sulphuric compound scientists say is responsible for garlic's malodorous scent.

And that provided he can successfully pinpoint the crucial gene, he will be able to reduce the concentration of allicin in garlic without sacrificing its benefits as a digestive aid and food preservative.

The professor also says laboratory testing conducted by his team showed that other components in garlic may be just as effective in fighting bacteria and infection as allicin -- and more importantly, these alternatives don't smell.

While products purporting to be "odourless" garlic already exist in capsule and oil form, Fogher claims his genetically tweaked garlic cloves would be cheaper to produce, making them ideal for medicinal applications.

"For people who love garlic (the smell) is not a problem," Fogher said. "But for people who take it as a medicine, it is a problem." Fogher said people with stomach problems will be able to eat "two to three time more" of his garlic cloves, which will be easier to digest without allicin, a complicated compound to break down.

But other food scientists are sceptical that an odourless garlic clove can be achieved without a greater medicinal sacrifice.

Peter Berry Ottaway, director of Britain's Mercia Testing Laboratories, notes that there have been numerous attempts over the years to deodorise garlic, with many products aimed at the commercial health-food industry.

But he cautioned that the chemical complexity of garlic -- which can take on different properties depending on whether it is in powder or oil form -- makes it difficult to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of an odourless variant.

Garlic cloves themselves have a neutral smell. The pungency for which the cloves are notorious only arises through the fusion of two other active ingredients -- allin and allinase -- when a clove is crushed or milled.

"The problem is that you start off with one substance, but as soon as you bite into garlic, it's (converted) into another substance," said Dr. Tom Coultate, a food biochemist with South Bank University in London. The actual compounds that produce garlic's smell, Coultate observed, are created "in response to damage."

"It seems to me extremely unlikely that you can separate the smelliness from the health benefits," Coultate said.

Professor Mel Rosenberg, a bad-breath specialist at Tel Aviv University who has conducted extensive research on breath odour, also has scientific reservations about endorsing the medicinal benefits of genetically modified garlic. He, like others in the field, believes more studies must be done on the topic.

Rosenberg tends to be charitable about the smelly side effects of eating garlic.

"It's really not that bad, but when people burp, then they subjectively think their breath must be bad because of the odour coming up from their stomach." Observing that a range of other foods and liquids such as onions, broccoli, cauliflower, milk and meat also cause bad breath, Rosenberg added, "Garlic has a bad rap."

"In earlier societies people ate garlic and everybody knew and it was no big deal," he said.

For instance, Shakespeare knew garlic smelled bad, but he also singled out other foods for their olfactory offence. "Nay, John," the bard wrote in King Henry VI, "it will be stinking law for his breath stinks with eating toasted cheese."

Andrew Caferkey, the head chef at La Poule au Pot in London, whose menu features escargot in butter garlic, may not cite Shakespeare, but he too thinks the search for an odourless garlic is much ado about nothing.

"I have heard of things like this," Caferkey said. "But if you like garlic (the smell) is part of the sensation. Maybe that's part of the thing." Lighting upon another idea, he adds: "It's an aphrodisiac as well."

And so far, no scientist has dared to tamper with the gene of love.

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October 10, 2000
Garlic and cholesterol
September 28, 2000

The Garlic Information Centre
Catholic University of the Sacred Heart at Piacenza and Cremona
Bad Breath Research
The Fresh Breath Centre

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