Hmmm.. coffee breath
I love coffee†
The malodorous whiff of coffee breath could soon become a thing of the past, thanks to the coffee itself. New research suggests that some components in the coffee may have the capacity to stop the growth of bacteria that are the cause of bad breath.
Dr. Mel Rosenberg, a professor of microbiology at Tel Aviv University, made this discovery serendipitously while studying what it is in coffee that makes breath smell bad. He set out to demonstrate the odour produced by certain extracts of coffee in saliva, but instead discovered that that were in fact components in the coffee which inhibit the causes of bad breath.
If coffee could be engineered to produce better smelling breath, coffee lovers would no longer have to stock up on mints and gum to counter its effects. If the odour inhibiting molecule can be isolated, this research may even provide us with improved breath fresheners by actually adding a little coffee to those mints.
† Photo by rpeschetz (Creative Commons Attribution).
