Plant-based diet for halitosis

Food for bad breath or halitosis

What should we eat to avoid bad breath?

A proper diet can prevent the onset of bad breath. On the other hand, avoid foods that cause halitosis is the first rule to avoid bad breath.

Within the diet for people with bad breath, the following dietary advices should be taken into account:

• Maintain a proper diet, rich in natural foods, is a way to increase the body fluids and avoid the problem of constipation. You have shown such as vitamin B deficiency can cause halitosis. Eating foods containing this vitamin may help us.
  • Group B vitamins: They can be obtained from whole cereals (wheat, oats, barley, etc.), dried fruit (hazelnuts, almonds, nuts), vegetables (cabbages, cauliflowers, spinach, radishes, endives, lettuces…), brewer’s yeast, etc.
• Mask the odor with herbs or spices: In order to disguise halitosis, parsley turns out especially suitable. Chewing a few parsley at the end of the meals helps to clear halitosis.

Many spices can help to remove the odor. Among all these we could mention fennel, anise, cardamom, etc. It is a good resource to chew seeds of these plants to remove bad breath.

In Eastern food, it is very common to provide a plate with some spicy seeds so that some of them can be chewed at the end of the meal. This practice is usual in India.

What you could eat to treat or avoid bad breath

• Foods rich in chlorophyll inhibit halitosis: chlorophyll freshens the mouth and provides a good smell. That is why many industrial mouthwashes include it in their composition. Also intake of chlorophyll-rich foods reduces the odor of mouth.

Apple constitutes a natural toothpaste. You can chew a piece of apple or eat an apple if you have bad breath, if you have not a tooth brush at hand to brush your teeth.

If we do not have any of these resources, we always have the possibility of rinsing the mouth with abundant water. Although we will not solve the problem, we will be able to reduce somewhat bad breath.

• Eat regularly: The lack of food in the stomach is responsible for many cases of bad breath. Very strict fastings can originate halitosis. It is good to have five meals a day, better than a couple of very separated meals.
• Avoid the spirits: Spirits give off vapors that can be very unpleasant

What you should not eat if you don’t want to have bad breath

Beware! This food that can produce bad breath

There are some foods that can cause halitosis. The person who has this problem should eat in moderation, without them or disguise the smell with some of the plants seen before. Foods that should be considered are:

• Garlic: Garlic has a deserved reputation for producing halitosis. However, giving it up means giving up a genuine natural medicine. You can hide it chewing a sprig of parsley, in any case we can use garlic capsules that keep all the properties of this, but unfortunately we have to renounce to its taste.
• Onion: Onion and garlic are two foods that produce very foul odor, as they are rich in essential oils penetrating odor. Even compounds are excreted through the pores of the skin. People with bad breath problems should be careful with these two foods.
• Cheeses and milk: Especially cheese and especially cured cheese (Cabrales cheese, Camembert, Rocafort, etc) produce very foul odor.
• Other foods of animal origin: Sausages, tuna, anchovies, etc, are included in this section

More information on bad breath and its natural treatment.

Written by Editorial Botanical-online team in charge of content writing

6 July, 2021