If you want a meal full of flavor and goodness, invite the Allium family to dinner. The family members include onions, shallots, chives, leeks and one of the most powerful superfoods in existence - garlic. While you are enjoying the taste of flavorful food, the flavinoids in alliums are stimulating the production of glutathione, a powerful antioxidant.

Of all the allium family, onions are the most common and the the most likely to be in daily use. The ubiquitous common brown onion, with its layers of golden skin peeling off to reveal the juicy vegetable within, is used in dishes both hot and cold. Peeled and sliced or chopped, it can be added to soups, stews, casseroles, salads, hamburgers, stir fries and roasts.

There are different kinds of onions for different uses, such as the sweet red onion which is so good in salads and goulash, the tiny French shallots which can be added unpeeled to the roasting dish and taste so sweet and delicious when cooked, or the small white pickling onions which can be used to pickle on their own or as part of a relish.

Onions don't just have the antioxident chops to fight cancer, they also fight cholesterol, in company with other members of the allium family. By adding onions to your everyday diet, you will boost your immune system to fight colds and flu and reduce your risk of heart disease and diabetes. One of the most powerful ways to fight winter ills and chills is to make onion soup, pack it in a flask, and take it with you to work.

Leeks have a milder flavor, but pack no less of an allium punch when it comes to being a superfood. To the basic ability to fend off cancer and heart disease, you can add a range of benefits such as Vitamin B6, folate, iron, manganese and Vitamin C which makes them useful in many other ways, including the stabilization of blood sugar. Adding leeks to soups and other dishes adds more than flavor. But leeks are so mild they can also be added to lighter dishes like omelets, making them suitable for any meal.

But while onions, leeks and even shallots are wonders of nutrition and flavor, they all have to bow to the most powerful member of the allium family. Garlic may be small by comparison, but each clove is packed with powerful antibiotic action that works externally as well as internally. Garlic was used to treat infections on the battlefield in World War I, and is still used by herbalists and in home remedies today. It has the advantage over modern antibiotics in that it does not lose its potency no matter how often it is used.

Some people find garlic hard to take, but in Mediterranean regions where it is chewed raw every day, it has been shown to strengthen the body against cancer and heart disease. It has even been shown to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's and Dementia. If you simply cannot stomach garlic in your food, consider taking a tasteless garlic supplement. There is no reason why you should miss out on the considerable and well documented benefits of this member of the allium family.

So be sure to send out that invitation, and make sure the whole family is included. They are not much on conversation, and they won't do the washing up, but what they do bring to the table is beyond price.

Learn more about this author, Gail Kavanagh.
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