Message #140

[Nomad]

Fresh garlic.

It must be noted that the only effective way of taking garlic is fresh and as fresh as possible. Extended storage reduces the anti-bacterial effectiveness.
The more popular version of garlic unfortunately tends to be the "odourless" pills and capsules found in health food stores. Odourless garlic as an antibiotic or general health promotion herb is useless if it doesn't have its smell. Garlic oil and powder supplements are produced by distilling fresh garlic, and then diluting it with other substances. This process destroys the majority of allicin in garlic. Therefore, the supplements rely on the human stomach to convert some of the remaining garlic components into allicin. Although a few garlic powder supplements are able to generate some allicin within the stomach, the amount converted, if any is converted at all, is dependant upon optimal stomach conditions.
 
Garlic Breath.

One of the reasons that garlic breath is so strong is that garlic is full of sulphorous compounds. These compounds "feed" the bacteria in the mouth and bad breath (halitosis) is caused as a result.
If you have bad breath generally then you probably have a lot of these halitosis inducing bacteria in your mouth anyway and so will suffer more from the effects of garlic.

The only guaranteed way to prevent garlic breath is simply not to eat garlic! For some of us that is inconceivable. However, if your main reason for eating garlic is for the health benefits then you can try some of the suggestions below.
Unfortunately there's no way of getting rid of the symptoms of garlic eating totally. You can reduce and mask the smell of your breath, but garlic still works its way through your entire system. So even with a powerful bad breath cure the garlic will usually still emerge from your pores the next day.
That said, there are some ways that the breath problems can at least be reduced.

How to Get Rid of Garlic Breath.

Bacteria induced garlic breath can be reduced by usual oral hygiene methods. Standard halitosis remedies include regular use of mouthwash, brushing and flossing teeth and tongue scraping.

There are also commercial bad breath remedies available which are more powerful than the usual mouthwashes you can buy in supermarkets. These are available from your doctor, your pharmacist or online and not recommended.

The best methods of reducing smelly garlic breath has got to be herbal. The most obvious one is to eat parsley with the meal. This seems to counteract the problem to some extent, although it doesn't prevent it completely. It's probably no coincidence that many garlic recipes also contain parsley. However it is not enough just to sprinkle in a teaspoon of dried parsley when cooking. To get the effect you need to chew at least one sprig of fresh parsley, preferably more. Ideally this should be chopped and added near the end of cooking, or eaten fresh afterwards.

Some people also claim that chewing cardamon seeds has a similar effect to parsley and can work as a garlic breath remedy. Cardamon has a very strong flavour so this might not be an option for some people.
Other methods include chewing mint preferably spearmint, chervil or coffee beans, sprinkling yourself with angelica water?(don't know about this one) and finally according to some tv chef that I can't remember, take the green shoot out of the middle?(don't know about this one either because if the garlic is fresh there should be no sprout).