Urban Herbal Girl- Fresh Garlic

Hello Sprout readers! This is Molly Kay, the Urban Herbal Girl, and I’ll be contributing to Sprout once a month with herbal remedies and facts. Herbs can easily become a part of your daily diet and are an affordable way to both heal and prevent illness. It can also be a pleasant way to reconnect to nature, even when you live in the urban jungle of Chicago!

Did you know that adults in the U.S. spent $14.9 billion on natural products, such as herbal remedies? It’s only natural that people turn to plants for their health, as herbalism reaches back to the age of the Neanderthal. In fact, herbal medicine is the oldest form of therapy practiced by humans, who, by trial-and-error and instinct, discovered helpful and harmful plants. To this day, scientists have found that our ancestor’s choices in plant medicine were right-on. Herbalists now rely on both science and lore to form what we know as herbal medicine today.