On a date, bad breath can come from all quarters

The number of ways that breath can go bad during a date are staggering, and halitosis is hard to overcome when trying to make an impression.

Since many dates involve a meal of some kind, it can be easy for savory, fatty or pungent foods to affect the breath. Foods to avoid while on a date include onions, garlic, greasy fast food, french fries, asparagus and Brussel sprouts, all of which can leave an aromatic stain on your conversation.

The same goes for movie snacks like popcorn, hot dogs, nachos and candy. Foods full of fat, protein, grease or oil can leave a film of leftover material in the mouth, which oral bacteria immediately go to work on, consuming the bits and giving off sulfuric compounds that smell heavy and rotten.

If you’ve ever asked someone for coffee - and who hasn’t - you’ve made another bad breath-related misstep. Coffee, even cold coffee frappes, leave microparticles behind on the tongue. These bits begin to decompose and give off the smell of stale coffee. Furthermore, coffee dries the mouth out, giving bacteria a fertile place to grow.

Coffee isn’t the only thing that leave a mouth dry on date-night. Anxiety is a little-known source of bad breath on dates, as it tends to turn the salivary glands off, leaving you with a dry, cottony mouth.

Experts recommend brushing one’s teeth to clean the teeth and chewing gum to keep saliva flowing. In addition, specialty breath fresheners can moisten the palate and eliminate the odor compounds associated with date-night halitosis.