Onions and other similar foods don’t stay on your breath for as long as garlic, why?
In: 61
i’m pretty sure it’s because it enters your bloodstream and diffuses into the air as you exhale
I looked it up myself since this thread is useless without an answer. I hope this is simple enough.
Body breaks down different chemicals it ingests at different rates.
The compound in garlic is volatile enough to evaporate out of the capillaries in your tongue and mouth.
The chemical stays in your blood longer, because the body breaks it down slowly.
This gives a longer period that the compound in garlic is evaporating into your breath.
As to why the smell stains your hands for so long, that seems to be a different mechanism.
Answer: When someone eats garlic, it reacts with bacteria in the mouth to create several smelly gases. These dissipate pretty fast. However unlike other foods, one compound in garlic is broken down in the liver into another smelly gas that can go from the bloodstream to your mouth and persists for hours.
“Fun” fact: Using garlic as a suppository is a common home remedy for a vaginal yeast infection.
It won’t cure your yeast infection but if you put garlic in your vagina you will be able to taste it in your mouth, because the sulfur compounds in garlic are absorbed into your bloodstream.
Off topic – I am highly sensitive to garlic. If I eat a small amount, I get stomach pains for a couple of days. If I eat a lot of it, I curl into a ball for about five hours with agonizing pains and gut spasms.
It’s the fact it is a FODMAP, and the technical term for what happens to be is “distension of the intestinal lumen”.
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