Scientists say the proteins present in whole-milk plain yogurt act to neturalize the smell and snuff out the sulphur-based compounds that cause the lingering smell from eating garlic.

The researchers feel confidant in their findings, and encourage garlic lovers to wolf down a yogurt for desert after eating garlic bread or a chicken kiev.

Dr. Sheryl Barringer, senior author of the study and a professor of food science and technology at Ohio State University in the United States, has previously investigated other foods to deduce whether they too can rid odors from the breath.

Among the foods already shown to combat garlic breath are lettuce, apples, milk, and mint. It's interesting to note that culinary styles that use a lot of garlic like those in India and the Near East typically also make use of mint and yogurt more so than do culinary styles in the West.

Dr. Barringer and Manpreet Kaur, a first author of the study and a Ph.D. student in Dr. Barringer's lab, placed equal amounts of raw garlic in glass bottles, ensuring the cluster of offending sulphur-based volatiles were released in concentrations that would be detected by the human nose.

They used the analytical tool of mass spectrometry to measure the levels of the volatile molecules in gaseous form which were present both before and after each treatment.

The researchers found that yogurt alone reduced nearly all (99%) of the major, odor-producing raw garlic volatiles.

When tested separately, the fat, water and protein components of yogurt also had a deodorising effect on raw garlic, though fat and protein performed better than water.

The proteins studied included forms of whey, casein and milk proteins that were all effective at deodorising garlic. But a casein micelle-whey protein complex was found to perform the best.

"High protein is a very hot thing right now," Dr. Barringer explained. "Generally, people want to eat more protein. An unintended side benefit may be a high-protein formulation that could be advertised as a breath deodoriser in addition to its nutritional claims."

"I was more excited about the protein's effectiveness because consumer advice to eat a high-fat food is not going to go over well," said Dr. Barringer, referring to how decades-long advice to avoid fat in various foods was simply not true, particularly in dairy where the presence of full milk fats have been found in more recent, comprehensive science to have a protective effect against cardiovascular disease and weight gain.

In the garlic study, the team carried out further experiments involving changing the pH level of the yogurt to make it less acidic, and found that doing so led to a reduced effectiveness of deodorisation of the yogurt on garlic.

"That's telling me it goes back to those proteins, because as you change pH you change the configuration of proteins and their ability to bind," Dr. Barringer said. "We know proteins bind flavor—a lot of times that's considered a negative, especially if a food with high protein has less flavor."

Yogurt and its individual ingredients neutralized a lower percentage of volatile compounds in fried garlic compared to raw garlic, and believe this is because frying reduces the presence of those volatiles by itself.

Dr. Barringer and her team believe their study sets a good basis to explore different proteins which could soon be formulated to create the perfect garlic-breath eradication product.

In the meantime, Dr. Barringer suggests Greek yogurt, which has a higher protein value than the whole milk plain yogurt, may be the most effective way to rid yourself of garlic breath.

"With apples, we have always said to eat them immediately," Dr. Barringer said. "The same with yogurt is presumed to be the case: have your garlic and eat the yogurt right away."

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