Garlic, fresh or not

Living in the Philippines I used to cooking with fresh garlic. My father is the person who teach me how to cook and along the way there is three spices that is always present in all our dish and it's garlic, onions and tomatoes. But then among the three it's the tomatoes that always get rotten immediately so oftentimes it's always the garlic and onions left. When I got here in the US I found out that there are already minced or paste garlic. I never used preservative garlic but last month hubby bought a jar of minced garlic. So it was the thing that I used in cooking but I found out it never do good. It doesn't smell like what I used to smell from the fresh garlic. So I bought two garlic for cooking. Now I am back to enjoying my cooking because I could smell the real aroma of fresh garlic.