Bad breath is super annoying and unpleasant both for you and those around you. And even if you’re healthy and maintain oral and dental hygiene, mouth odor can persist for hours after accidentally eating certain foods that cause bad breath. Luckily, there are also those foods and drinks that have the opposite effect on our breath. Specific foods, herbs, and drinks, such as the 8 we’ll list below, have been known to naturally reduce a smelly breath. You can incorporate them in your diet regularly, if you haven’t already, and stop worrying about your breath once and for all, without the use of gum or mints.
1. Plain yogurt
This first one may strike you by surprise, but it's true, plain white yogurt or Greek yogurt have a beneficial effect not only for your gut health, but also for youth oral health, and it improves bad breath, too. The probiotics in the yogurt help the good bacteria in your mouth grow strong and decrease the number of bad bacteria that produce hydrogen sulfide, the cause of bad breath. This was backed by a 2005 study that found that participants who ate plain yogurt for 6 weeks had less hydrogen sulfide in their mouths, as well as less plaque and healthier gums.
2. Parsley and other herbs
Had a dinner that was a bit too abundant in terms of the garlic? Before you run to the store to pick up some mints, check if you have any fresh herbs, such as parsley, rosemary, or basil around. These herbs naturally contain fragrant oils that will help you mask the garlic breath just as well as mint, if not better.
3. Cinnamon
The health benefits of cinnamon are plenty, but crucially for oral health, cinnamon has powerful antimicrobial properties that can help you get rid of the odor-causing bacteria and helps improve your dental health, too. Cinnamon oil, in particular, is known to break down the volatile sulfurous compounds that cause bad breath.
4. Ginger
Like cinnamon, ginger is renowned for its antimicrobial abilities, as well as the added benefit of soothing digestion, too. If you need to restore the freshness of your breath after an especially pungent meal, munching down a small piece of ginger or drinking a cup of ginger tea after the meal will be able to neutralize any unpleasant smells, leaving your smile fresher than ever.
5. Green tea
Green tea is probably one of the healthiest drinks you could have, period. After all, there's a reason why it is customary to finish up any meal with a glass of green tea in many Asian countries. It turns out that green tea contains certain compounds called polyphenols that can banish bad bacteria in the mouth and the unpleasant smells along with them, too. There are added benefits to drinking green - from protecting you from certain types of mouth cancer to keeping your teeth healthy as well.
6. Melons
Watermelons, cantaloupes, honeydew melons - choose your favorite dessert to follow after any meal to refresh your breath. Not only are all of these juicy fruits super hydrating and will help flush out any debris from in-between your teeth, but they are also rich in vitamin C. It turns out that eating ascorbic acid (another name for vitamin C), makes the environment in your mouth cavity too acidic for bad bacteria to thrive, thereby helping you get rid of all those bad smells, too.
7. Fennel seeds
A method of getting rid of bad breath that comes from India requires one to simply chew on some fennel seeds after a meal. Fennel oils have antibacterial properties that will neutralize your breath, and the act of chewing also increases saliva production, which helps clean away any food particles and bacteria from your mouth. To learn more about fennel and the ways it can be used to maintain health in our previous article The 12 Health Benefits of Fennel.
8. Apples
We might have kept the best for last. Of course, we all know that apples are good for you, but it turns out that these juicy fruits are especially beneficial for our dental and oral health. Not only are they rich in both Vitamin C and polyphenols that will help kill all those odor-generating bacteria, but the juiciness of the fruit will also help clean out in-between your teeth as you're biting on the fruit. We're not certain about all doctors, but an apple a day certainly keeps the dentist away.
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