Why Does Your Mouth Have An Unpleasant Smell After Eating Garlic or Onion

Sophie Sylvia

, garlic and onions are culinary spices widely known for their medicinal value and significant unpleasant mouth odour whenever you eat any of them, either raw or in a meal. Why is it so? This article answers the question detailedly.

Vinmec International Hospital, after so much research, discovered that both garlic and onions have a great composition of the sulphur compound, alliin. Hence, when you crush, blend or chop solid garlic or onions, the chemical structure of the sulfur-containing compound in them breaks. This process converts alliin to allicin and releases a bad-smelling gas called Allyl methyl sulphide (AMS). Then, this repulsive gas is absorbed into the bloodstream and stays in the stomach for several hours or even days since it takes a very long period to be digested in the gastrointestinal tract. According to Brittanica, studies have shown that when you breathe out throughout the time when this sulphur-containing gas is in your body system, the lungs carry the nasty smell of allyl methyl sulphide (AMS) from the stomach and release it into your mouth, causing a bad breath. Note that this foul smell from the mouth doesn’t evacuate until the body has processed all the sulphur compounds in the garlic and the onions.

In summary, you have terrible breath after consuming any of the aforementioned cooking spices because your gut releases this gas (AMS) when you exhale or breathe out. Drinking green tea, taking milk, and chewing on scented leaves are ways to get rid of bad breath caused by eating garlic and onions.

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