Drink a Glass of Milk to Neutralize Garlic BreathS

Scientists looking deep into garlic odor recently came to the conclusion that it's water and fat that reduce garlic breath, so milk is the perfect delivery vehicle. Consider milk, or a non-skim latte, or even ice cream, as a post-pasta breath fixer.

Image by striatic.

The recent study, from the Journal of Food Science, found that if you really want to cut back on garlic odors that find their way out of your mouth (and sweat), you should drink milk as you're eating, if that's at all palatable:

Mixing milk with garlic in the mouth before swallowing had a higher odour neutralising effect than drinking milk after eating the garlic in the trial.

And full-fat milk provided better results than skimmed milk or just water, according to breath samples taken from a volunteer.

One of the compounds milk counteracts is allyl methyl sulphide or AMS. This cannot be broken down in the gut during digestion, and so it is released from the body in the breath and sweat.

From the study, it seems that any food with a decent mixture of fat and water should help move garlic quickly through your system, so a latte, ice cream, yogurt, and other dairy-style foods should work, too.