You ordered the garlic prawns, or the aioli came free with the fries, and now there is a meeting at two or a date at nine. If you want to know how to get rid of garlic breath, start with where the smell comes from, because most of it is no longer sitting on your teeth. Food scientists at Ohio State University have spent years putting garlic into volunteers and measuring their breath, and their results point to a short list of moves that work, plus one timing rule most people miss.
Why garlic breath hangs around for hours
A raw clove barely smells until you cut or chew it. Damage the clove and an enzyme turns a compound called alliin into allicin, which then breaks down into a set of sulfur compounds. Four of them carry the smell on your breath: diallyl disulfide, allyl mercaptan, allyl methyl disulfide and allyl methyl sulfide.
Three of those fade within a few hours. Allyl methyl sulfide is the slow one. Your gut absorbs it, it travels in your blood, and your body clears it through your lungs, your sweat and your urine. Every breath out carries a little of it. Sheryl Barringer, who chaired Ohio State's Department of Food Science and Technology, told Popular Science: "Twenty-four hours after consuming garlic, you can still smell it."
Doctors noticed this back in 1936. Popular Science reports the case of a patient fed garlic soup through a feeding tube who still had garlic breath hours later, though the soup never passed through his mouth.
Garlic breath after brushing teeth
Brushing clears the bits of garlic stuck between your teeth and on your tongue, and those bits keep the smell going, so brush and floss anyway. What a toothbrush can't reach is the allyl methyl sulfide already in your bloodstream. That is why your mouth can taste of mint while the person across the table still picks up garlic a few hours later. Brushing deals with the mouth. The lungs keep working on their own schedule.
“Oh wow, the saliva flow.”
What Ohio State found with apple, lettuce and mint
In 2016 Rita Mirondo, then a Ph.D. student at Ohio State, and Sheryl Barringer published a study in the Journal of Food Science on which foods cut garlic volatiles on the breath. Volunteers chewed 3 grams of softneck garlic for 25 seconds, then straight away ate or drank one test item: water as the control, apple (raw, juiced or heated), lettuce (raw or heated), mint leaves (raw or juiced) or green tea. A selected ion flow tube mass spectrometer measured the four sulfur compounds a minute later and then every 10 minutes for an hour.
- Raw apple and raw lettuce cut the garlic volatiles by 50% or more compared with water during the first 30 minutes.
- Raw mint leaves did better than raw apple and raw lettuce on all four compounds.
- Apple juice and mint juice lowered the compounds, though less than chewing the raw food.
- Heated apple and heated lettuce still gave a significant drop.
- Green tea made no difference in this study.
The researchers put the raw foods' lead down to two things working together: enzymes in the fresh produce, plus phenolic compounds, which survive cooking. Barringer's timing note is the part people skip. The food has to go in at the same time as the garlic or soon after. Wait too long and, in her words, "It's past the point for the compound in the apple to react with the compounds in garlic."
An earlier Ohio State study, published in the same journal in 2010, tested milk. Whole milk lowered the garlic compounds more than fat-free milk, and milk drunk during the meal worked better than milk drunk afterwards.
How to get rid of garlic breath quickly
Put the research in order and the plan for a garlicky dinner looks like this:
- Order a side salad or finish with a few fresh mint leaves, and eat them while the garlic is still on the plate.
- Drink a glass of whole milk with the meal if it suits the food.
- Eat a raw apple on the way out.
- Brush and floss when you get home or back to the office.
- Give your mouth a fresh start right before the next conversation.
The first four are about the garlic. The fifth is about you walking into the room. Nobody brings a toothbrush to a restaurant, and a mint melts in a minute and leaves a sugary coating behind.
A garlic breath remedy that lives in your jacket pocket
Dragon Breath is our answer to step five. It is a 50 ml mouth spray of chilcuague extract. Chilcuague (Heliopsis longipes), also called golden root, grows in the Sierra Gorda of Central Mexico, and the Mara team wild-harvests it from growth zones it selects with the help of local elders. Mexican ethnobotanists (Cilia-López and colleagues) recorded the root being chewed and used as a spice. You can read the full story of the plant in our guide to chilcuague.
Here is what one spray feels like after a plate of garlic pasta. For a second you taste something earthy and a little peppery. Then a bright electric buzz spreads across your tongue and mouth, and your mouth waters fast. When that settles, a clean, fresh feeling stays behind, and it lasts long after a mint would have dissolved. The buzz comes from affinin (also called spilanthol), which the root carries at 6.9 to 8.5 mg per gram.
A customer filmed a first spray on camera and said, "Oh wow, the saliva flow." That rush of saliva is the part people notice most.
Dragon Breath – Chilcuague Extract
50 ml mouth spray. Wild-harvested chilcuague root, dual-extracted. 250+ sprays.
Add to bagWhy a spray beats the alternatives after dinner
A bottle fits in a jacket pocket or the bottom of a bag. One spray is enough to start, and once you know the feeling you can go up to five. A bottle holds more than 250 sprays, so one lasts through a long run of dinners out.
The extract stays sealed inside Miron violet glass, which keeps light off it and keeps its quality for longer. Loose root and powder sit open to air and light every time you reach for them, and neither one is something you can use at a restaurant table. The root is dual-extracted in organic solutions, and the spray is vegan, gluten free, sugar free and non-GMO, so there is nothing sweet left coating your teeth.
Picture it. You pay the bill, step outside, give the bottle one spray on the way to the car, and by the time you reach the next door your mouth feels clean and awake. Then you walk in and start talking.
Questions people ask
How long does garlic breath last?
Up to about 24 hours, according to Ohio State's Sheryl Barringer. Allyl methyl sulfide is the compound that takes longest to clear, and it leaves through your lungs and skin.
Why do I still smell garlic after brushing my teeth?
Brushing clears the garlic left in your mouth. The allyl methyl sulfide already absorbed into your blood keeps coming out on your breath for hours.
What food gets rid of garlic breath fastest?
In the 2016 Mirondo and Barringer study, raw mint leaves cut garlic volatiles the most, followed by raw apple and raw lettuce, which lowered them by 50% or more in the first 30 minutes. Eat them with or straight after the garlic.
Does Dragon Breath taste of mint?
No. It tastes earthy and a little peppery for a second, then the buzz takes over across your tongue and mouth and leaves a clean, fresh feeling.
