The Bad Breath Blog

If you ask someone to name the first smelly food that comes to their mind, many people would probably say “cheese.” And boy, would they be right. Many types of cheese not only emit a powerful odor, but they can also leave you with halitosis. Your mouth is teeming with bacteria, and these organisms, like humans, have to eat. Unfortunately for you, bacteria also dispose of waste, which causes your bad breath. Milk, cheese and other dairy products contain their own types of bacteria and active cultures that interact with the organisms in your mouth, causing halitosis.

However, while alcohol-free mouthwash can get rid of bad breath after consuming any type of cheese, some are certainly more pungent than others. For example, some of the worst-smelling cheeses are located in Europe. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest offenders.

Now that’s one smelly bishop
If you travel to England you can find a cheese with a name that says it all – the stinking bishop. According to Hotel Club, this cheese is made from pasteurized Gloucestershire cow’s milk and is soaked in something called stinking bishop pear juice. It is then set to mature for six to eight weeks before it truly starts to live up to its name.

People who have been in the presence of this cheese have described it as smelling like old, rotten gym socks. In fact, the powerful odor of stinking bishop was thrown into the spotlight in the 2005 animated movie “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.” In the film, Gromit uses the cheese to revive Wallace after he has fainted. Still not convinced that this snack has one of the most pungent odors? In 2009, a panel of experts named it the worst-smelling cheese in all of England, a land known for its smelly dairy products.

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One of the perks of being a bad breath expert is that you get to monitor the state of halitosis research. While in other fields it might be boring to read hundreds of studies and sift through reams of data, for me there’s nothing better than hunkering down with the latest investigations into the causes of and treatments for oral odor. That’s because bad breath occasionally generates some seriously weird research.

Consider everyone’s favorite new study: Recently, researchers at the UK’s University of Cranfield partnered with French fromage experts in order to find the world’s stinkiest cheeses. After sniffing and eating samples from dozens of candidates (and presumably, getting some of the worst halitosis on Earth), the judges declared a winner – Vieux Boulogne, a French cheese with a rind soaked in beer. The variety is so smelly that it beat out Pont l’Eveque (known to stain entire fridges with its scent) and Camembert (a cheese affectionately nicknamed “God’s Feet”).

And if nose-based judging is a little too subjective for your taste, you’re in luck. Researchers later verified their findings by using a specially equipped electronic sensor. Once again, Vieux Boulogne reigned supreme as the King of Oral Odor.

If you think that cheese-based scientific inquiry is a bit unusual, wait until you get a load of a study published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology. In it, a pair of dental hygienists from Hebrew University theorized that we might be able to use blue light to kill bad breath.

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Some foods that are notorious for causing halitosis are garlic, onions, curry, fish and cheese.  Therefore, you’re going to want to freshen your mouth after eating these.  You also need to freshen your mouth once every 30-60 minutes until the breath offending-food is out of your bloodstream- sometimes this takes up to 24 hours!  It isn’t a good idea to brush your teeth that often, so trying some foods that banish halitosis may be just what the dentist ordered.

Foods that can fix bad breath:

1) Lemons- These are easy to find in restaurants, bars, etc.  Lemon-flavored candies can work as well as normal lemons, and are more easily portable.

2) Green garnishes (i.e. parsley, basil, and rosemary) - A garnish doesn’t always just serve as a decoration.  The meals that have garnish often have a lot of onions and garlic–thus needing a breath freshener afterward.  If you chew on a parsley’s sprigs, it releases breath-freshening oils. 

3)  Crisp and fresh foods like apples, firm pears, carrots, jicama are all high in fiber, plus chewing bumps up the productive of saliva (functions like a scrubbing rinse inside the oral cavity). 

4) Crunchy spices like anise, coriander, cardamom, and fennel seeds are available in many grocery stores.  Try getting these spices, mixing equal parts together in a covered bowl, and keep them around for mealtime.  If you chew on a few seeds here and there, enough oil should be released to freshen your breath after eating.  They taste good, as well.

5)  Mint sprigs/cinnamon sticks (cinnamon/mint gum, etc.)- These especially help against onion and garlic.  Cinnamon, with its essential oils, also helps kill various types of oral bacteria.  Gum without sugar is less likely to cause cavities and fuel the bad breath-causing bacteria. 

6) Berries/yogurt- Eat these foods to prevent bad breath…if you eat half of one cup of plain and sugarless yogurt twice a day, this can lower the levels of hydrogen sulfide in your mouth.  The same goes with berries, melons, oranges, and other foods high in Vitamin C- they help kill smelly bacteria in the oral cavity.  Try having a cup of fruit with yogurt twice a day, and this should help get rid of the bad breath.

Last but not least, practice good oral care, and this will decrease your “Real Age” as much as 6.4 years!