The possible reason behind Vampires being weak to Garlic.


So it's often said vampires are often overpowered by the smell of garlic or that they have allergies to it. But in digging into foods for pet safety, I found something else. That garlic causes anemia in animals like cats, dogs and horses. It damages red blood cells.

For a creature that feasts on blood to survive, garlic would weaken a vampire greatly, both depleting nutrients from its food and being poisonous to, depending on the lore, a creature that can't produce its own red blood cells and already suffers from chronic anemia.

This probably wasn't the reason when Stoker picked it out in the 19th century, but is this a more logical reason for vampires to be warded off by plants of the Amaryllidaceae family? Cysteine sulfoxide poisoning?