Now that the days of wearing masks are behind us (we hope), it’s essential to ensure your breath is clean and fresh. Unfortunately, even if your dental hygiene is top notch, certain foods can make your breath a little unpleasant.
Spicing it up
Chillies, peppers, curry powder and other spices are the perfect ingredients to enhance a dish. But take note, all of these can cause dragon breath. The reason is they leave a spicy film on your tongue, and the odours from this are exhaled every time you breathe out. Peppers, in particular, contain an ingredient called capsaicin that gives them their spicy taste and is thought to also contribute to bad breath.
The most well known of all bad-breath ingredients, garlic causes different reactions in people, and many are even allergic. Chefs refer to garlic as an aromatic and it’s often essential for flavoursome cooking. Unfortunately, its contribution to bad breath is twofold. It contains a compound called allyl methyl sulphide that remains in the mouth after it’s been eaten, causing an unpleasant smell. Other compounds in garlic can remain in the stomach, be absorbed into the bloodstream and carried to the lungs, creating further bad breath later on. The solution? There’s the age-old remedy of eating parsley, but scientists now suggest drinking a glass of milk when you eat garlic could help.
Avoid the onions
The pungent smell of onions on someone’s breath is unmistakable. The reason for this is that onions contain volatile chemicals, including sulphur. In fact, there’s even a molecule in onions that’s identical to the one that gives rotten eggs their unbearable smell.
It’s the worst thing ever when someone opens a tin of tuna in the office. When they breathe on you during a meeting, it takes the unpleasantness to a new level. When canned tuna is prepared, it’s precooked, cleaned and then placed into the can before being cooked again. This can sometimes cause the creation of a histamine, which causes the fishy smell. Some brands are more pungent than others.
Can the coffee
The bad news is your morning cuppa can create the perfect environment for bacteria to grow in your mouth. Coffee is high in sulphur, which not only can make your breath pungent, but also dries out your mouth, reducing your saliva and causing the bad-smelling bacteria to hang around for longer.
Just like garlic, alcohol breath actually comes from your lungs and not your mouth, so eating a few mints won’t have the desired effect. While your liver metabolises and eliminates most of the alcohol from your bloodstream, the remaining alcohol is eliminated through your breath and urine. There’s also, of course, always the chance that if you’ve had a few and decide to drive home, your breath will put you in jail, like the irresponsible souls on the new season of Random Breath Test on CBS Reality (DStv channel 132)! There’s no getting around these policemen when it comes to finding those who are over the limit.
Watch Random Breath Test weekdays at 11:10 and 14:50 from 18 July on CBS Reality (132) for a real-life experience of what the police officers in Australia have to go through when doing random drink and drug testing.