How not to reek of the stinking rose

I will not give up eating garlic, not even for tango dancing.


I will modify my habitual need. If I know I’m dancing within the next 12 hours, I would avoid garlic in its raw form.

Cooked garlic seems to run through the system more inconspicuously and more quickly.

The best way to rid your body of garlic and any bad breath is to keep active and work out—especially doing aerobic activity. Your elevated metabolism naturally carries food, including garlic and its perfume, through your miles of digestive tract much more quickly. Sedentary people tend more toward halitosis because food sits in their stomachs and ferments, decays, whatever it does there in that dark pouch. Watson, it’s elementary, increase the transit time—naturally, of course—and you get rid of the scent.

Every other morning, I swim in a chlorinated pool. The aromas of any garlic and other food residue I may have eaten seep out through my pores and through my quickened respiration (pity my fellow swimmers, perhaps). An hour workout in the pool and I’m squeaky clean and fresh as a daisy. (As for the pool water, I don’t know, maybe they empty the pool after I swim.)

Don’t like exercise? Try walking. Try languishing in a warm bath tub. I’ve heard a bath does the same trick too. Maybe avoid speaking words that start with H. Maybe breathe and talk through

your nose. Or, I guess, you could avoid garlic, onions . . . but to my mind garlic breath may be startling but it’s not the most offensive of body odors. Smoker’s breath combined with meat digestion . . . smells barn-like to me . . . uh, how’d I get started on this topic?

Disclaimer: This pool-swim thing has not been scientifically tested but I believe it works for me – not one friend has advised me to the contrary of its efficacy.