If you are worried about garlic breath, drink a glass of milk, say scientists who claim it can stop the lingering odour.
In tests with raw and cooked cloves, milk “significantly reduced” levels of the sulphur compounds that give garlic its flavour and pungent smell.
The authors told the Journal of Food Science it is the water and fat in milk that deodorises the breath.
For optimum effect, sip the milk as you eat the garlic, they say.
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. Read more…
