Lucas Beaumont
Garlic is a very useful and versatile ingredients that is either adorable or disgusting. Many people love the spicy, heavy flavor of garlic, whether it’s raw or cooked. Yet the powerful odor of garlic is a mere disgust to some people. Whether it’s preparing garlic or eating it, the oils and the strong odor can get into your clothes, skin, and even your breath which can make u stink. Consumption of a lot of garlic may cause the odor to get into your sweat glands that make you smell like a garlic clove.
The strong aroma of garlic comes from oils and terpentenes found in the bulb. When garlic is digested or prepared, allyl methyl sulfide, or AMS, forms and is not catabolised down during digestion and is released as such in the bloodstream. It’s trnsported to the lungs and the skin, where it’s released. These sulfur compounds in the garlic cause strong, pungent odor in the breath and the sweat. Since digestion of food takes several hours and the release of AMS takes several hours more, this effect may be persist for a long time. The smell and the oils of fresh garlic can get into clothes and the skin pores. The strong odor of garlic can be avoided using some modified preparation methods such as Garlic press (devices that can finely mince garlic), Roasted garlic, Fried garlic or Garlic powder.
Here are some beneficiary tips that helps avoiding garlic odor:
1. A common way to remove these smells from your hands is to use soap for washing and rub them with a stainless steel spoon or other stainless steel utensil. It is said that the sulfur compounds from the garlic react with stainless steel and the odour is neutralized.
2. One can use lemon-water for rinsing hands and fingers after chopping or preparing garlic. Squeezing the juice of lemons into a bowl and dipping hands in concentrate for a few minutes and later rinsing off will make hands smell fresh. One can also use lemon-scented toiletries to get rid of odors from clothes and utensils.
3. To remove smell of garlic from a wooden cutting board, one can cover it with a thick kitchen soda paste, sodium bicarbonate and a little amount of warm water and let the mixture be there for about 15 minutes and then rinse off. Baking soda may also be used for deodorizing garlic-scented hands, along with a little salt and water.
4. Noxzema is useful for removing garlic odor from hands and body. Basically a skin cleanser containing camphor, menthol and eucalyptus, among other ingredients that help neutralizing the garlic odor.
5. Since the smell results mainly AMS in the blood which is released through the lungs over long duration, eating parsley leaves provides a temporary barrage. To remove the garlicky odor from your breath a few parsley leaves can help. Even chewing cardamom seeds can work as a garlic breath remedy.
6. Strong-scented cologne can hide the garlic smells for few days until the AMS disappears. The strong-smelling sulfides in garlic will go with the time, but for the meantime you can mask it. Its better to refrain vigorous exercise and physical work if you’re concerned that excessive sweating will make u stink more.
7. The use of a hot water baths, steam baths or sauna or through any other exercise that makes you sweat and release your bodily toxins will speed up the release of AMS from the body.
