Why SweetAllium?

Allium is the name of a genus of plants that includes onions and garlic, chives, leeks and hundreds of other edible, ornamental or wild species. The edible ones rock a badass set of qualities: beautiful, spicy, sweet and also medicinal. My favorite, garlic, is a perfect example of how food can be medicine and medicine can be delicious.

Allium Sativum, grown by Mama

Sometimes it surprises me that garlic is medicinal because it's so tasty and ubiquitous. That's the defining grace of herbal medicine, though: it works gently. Apparently, garlic has a long history as a medicine, ancient even. According to Matthew Wood and other herbalists, garlic

• supports beneficial gut flora and kills unhelpful bacteria
• supports metabolism and is also nutritive (so it helps the body replace old worn out tissues with healthy new ones),
• supports digestion for most constitutions,
• can be used reliably to alleviate hypertension, and
• dissolves and expels toxins.

And this is just a summary of its main uses as a medicine.

But it's also a food! What if all the food we ate were laden with supportive, friendly, delicious medicines like garlic? Each meal could be a boost to our bodies, like a splashy, quenching cup of sports drink to a marathon runner.

Sounds delicious.