Scientifically Proven Ways to Get Rid of Garlic Breath (2024)

Whether it's in pasta sauce, roasted and spread on bread, or raw to ward off vampires, we love garlic.

Unfortunately, it's easy for everyone else to tell that we love it — for up to 24 hours. We can only imagine that garlic breath has plagued mankind since we started digging bulbs out of the ground. Enter Ohio State University to help. Researchers there have evidence suggesting that we can neutralize bad breath naturally before it offends those around us. According to the science, here are easy ways to get rid of garlic breath with other edible plants.

Serve it with spearmint

Raw mint leaves and lettuce have phenolic compounds that mitigate the impact of the sulfur compounds causing halitosis — as long as you eat them with or soon after consuming garlic. Here's a lamb and potato dish that calls for six cloves of garlic, balanced by a mint-rum sauce, to consider for impressing a date or group without the aftermath. Simply garnish with raw mint leaves to do the trick.

Eat raw apples

We all know that if you cut an apple and leave it out, it will turn brown. The color is caused by an enzyme that not only makes the fruit a bit less appealing to look at when it sits out but also acts as a natural deodorant to the bad-breath causing sulfides in garlic.

Add lemon juice

This works particularly well with crushed garlic. The acid in lemon juice neutralizes alliinase, an enzyme produced by crushing garlic that causes our unfortunate odor situations.

Drink green tea

Green tea is very high in antioxidants called polyphenols. As with the enzymes in the apple, polyphenols can cover up the odor-causing chemicals in garlic, depending on the type of green tea.

Sheryl Barringer, a lead researcher behind multiple studies, said that it's best to use the bad breath cures at the same time when you're eating garlic. So we'd recommend adding apples to that salad with garlicky dressing or using lemon juice in your next garlic dip. Unless you want to squeeze the citrus straight into your mouth, that is.