Eating more garlic in the diet could decrease cholesterol levels and ease the burden of heart disease, says a joint Israeli-Polish animal study. The researchers investigated the effects of adding different doses of garlic to a cholesterol-rich diet for rats, and found beneficial effects were dependent on the dose, reports FoodNavigatorUSA.com.

The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, concluded that the studied commercial garlic possesses dose-dependent hypolipidemic, antioxidant and anticoagulant properties. High cholesterol levels, or hypercholesterolaemia, have a long association with a number of diseases, particularly cardiovascular disease (CVD), the cause of almost 50% of deaths in Europe, and are reported to cost the EU economy an estimated €169 billion a year.