Can you eat garlic when pregnant?
Hannah Weiss
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Find out if it's safe to eat garlic during pregnancy, including raw garlic, smelling garlic and garlic pills. Plus precautions to take to keep you and your baby healthy.
The official advice on eating garlic in pregnancy
Good news! It's generally fine to eat garlic when you're pregnant. According to Healthline, garlic is smelly but safe.
Some people may find that garlic gives them an upset stomach, heartburn or increased wind – particularly when eating raw garlic. If you experience these side effects, reduce the amount of garlic in your diet.
Smelling garlic
FREE NEWBORN NAPPIES
A heightened sense of smell can be a common sign of early pregnancy. If you find yourself experiencing phantom garlic smells, it could be a sign that you're expecting!
Garlic pills
Raw garlic and garlic supplements contain allicin. This is a compound that can help relax the muscles in your blood vessels, allowing them to dilate. This process lowers your blood pressure.
There's a small amount of research which suggests that taking garlic supplements may help to lower cholesterol levels and reduce blood pressure (though there's no evidence that it can help to prevent pre-eclampsia). However this also means that garlic pills can act as a blood thinner and increase the risk of bleeding.
Taking a blood thinner before your delivery date could potentially lead to serious birth complications linked to excess bleeding.
If you currently take a blood thinner, or if you need surgery, talk to your GP or midwife before taking garlic as a supplement.
Garlic and breastfeeding
If you eat garlic regularly while pregnant, research shows that your amniotic fluid and breastmilk will start to smell a little garlicky. Studies suggest this scent may increase the time your newborn baby spends breastfeeding, but more investigation is needed.
Many experts reckon that babies learn to like the flavours they taste in amniotic fluid and breastmilk, so if you're regularly eating garlic, your baby might be a fan when it comes to weaning!
Wild garlic
If you want to use wild garlic in your cooking, it's safest to buy it from a supermarket or your local farmer's market. Misidentification is common when foraging for wild herbs and picking wild garlic could lead to food poisoning.
Garlic in cooking
It all depends on the type of food you're going to season with garlic. The NHS recommends the following guidelines:
- Always wash any fruit or vegetables thoroughly before cooking.
- Only eat meat and shellfish that has been properly cooked, to avoid food poisoning.
- Limit portions of oily fish, including salmon, trout, mackerel and herring, to two per week.
- Only eat dairy products that have been pasteurised to remove harmful bacteria.
- Look for a British Lion stamp when buying eggs. Any eggs without a British Lion stamp should not be eaten raw.
You can learn more about foods to avoid in pregnancy by clicking the link below. But whatever you're eating, it's fine to season it with garlic. Even really garlicky food is unlikely to contain enough allicin to affect your health or your baby.
Delicious garlic recipes
Love garlic? Why not try one of these great pregnancy-safe recipes?
- Garlic bread
- Garlic prawns (make sure the prawns are properly cooked)
- Quick garlic & veg pasta (use pasteurised cream cheese)
- Garlic mushrooms (only buy mushrooms from a supermarket or fruit and veg market and wash thoroughly)
The Day-by-Day Pregnancy Book: Count Down Your Pregnancy Day by Day by Dr Maggie Blott is packed full of advice from a team of experts to help guide you through your pregnancy from conception to birth. See more details here at Amazon.
Looking for more pregnancy diet info? Check out our articles below, or swap tips with other mums-to-be in our forum.
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