Explain why people are repulsed by onion or garlic breath. When I eat onions, my breath smells (to me) like onions. Why would people who like onions not like onion-scented breath? Similar question with garlic.
If you enjoy mint, you brush your teeth with mint-flavored paste and it’s a positive when others notice your minty breath.
Some people like cinnamon gum, but I find that smell repulsive. And what other combinations could work? Would anyone enjoy another’s bacon breath?
For one thing, B.O. often smells like onions. For another, the results are often quite strong. Third, even most people who like to eat onions do not like to chop them, as they will inhale and make themselves cry.
To answer the question in one word YES. The compounds in onion and garlic react with the bacteria in the mouth to produce foul smelling breath. Garlic will work it’s way through the body and will eventually end up in the lungs which adds to the problem.
Yeah, when it comes to breath, garlic and onions don’t smell like garlic and onions, they just smell like bad breath.
Garlic can come out of your body though in ways that some may find pleasant and others unpleasant. A decade or so ago I bought a garlic oven (something like this one). Found out that I loved me some roasted garlic. Ate three entire heads of garlic one night which I squeezed out clove by clove on bits of Melba toast. The next day one of the guys at work said I was making the place smell like a Mediterranean deli. 
I find garlic breath quite sexy sometimes. Seriously.
What about for the people without BO? What if someone doesn’t have the bacteria in the mouth that produces a foul smell? What if they just have breath that smells a little oniony?
Would that even be a little pleasant? Or, going back to the titular question, is onion breath always bad?
It depends how strong it is. I know a guy that it literally makes me take a step backwards. If it is slight then I smell it but am not repelled by it. I like garlic and onions in my food but not in my face.
I put onion peelings in a ziplock bag before putting them in the trash so my kitchen doesn’t smell like BO. Old onions reek.
Garlic and onion breath are sort of like farts. Your own may seem acceptable, but that of others is automatically loathsome.
Er, cite?
I love eating roasted garlic too, but I’m afraid to really go for it and discover what my body’s threshold is – that point where I will start to stink of garlic. I limit myself to about four cloves in a sitting. If I knew I could eat an entire garlic head and not stink, I would.
It doesn’t particularly bother me if someone has just eaten a pizza or whatever and you can smell the onion or the garlic. But I find it different than “bad breath”, which is a totally different animal (and smells somewhat like a dead animal).
However, some people seem more sensitive to it. I know when I lived in Germany, the Germans really hated the odor of garlic on anyone, and they were extremely sensitive to it. Germans could tell if you ate a pizza with a dash of garlic three days prior! (No exaggeration!)
I think it depends if you grew up around the odors - never heard anyone complain in Italy.
Personally, I find coffee breath to be far, far worse than onions or garlic.
Could it be partially cultural?
I have known Asian people who find the odor of meat eaters unpleasant. I once worked with a Middle-Eastern man who smelled so strongly of the food he ate that staff would turn away when he walked nearby.
Unfamiliar smells.
My daughter eats so much garlic that I’d know she was in the room with my eyes closed. It doesn’t smell badly to me. More like fresh garlic.
I remember at work people coming from lunch and apologizing because they had just eaten curry. It just smelled like good food to me.
Maybe the next morning it wouldn’t have.
Good hygiene must figure in here somewhere?
I like garlic as much as the next guy with an Italian grandmother… but three HEADS in one night?? That is a lot of garlic.:eek:
Yep, and I haven’t done it since…though I’d like to! It’s just too embarrassing to walk around smelling like a Mediterranean deli all the next day. 
And with regard to garlic breath, I think it’s okay as long as the garlic was eaten late enough to still be fresh on the breath. More than once someone has told me that the garlic on my breath was making them hungry, but that was usually within half an hour or so after eating something with lots of garlic in it. But I know that if I don’t get somewhere and brush my teeth I’ll have bad breath in a couple of hours or so. Same with onions.
I can’t stand the smell of raw onions on my own breath. Drives me nuts. I avoid it if at all possible.
Garlic is okay. In Korea everyone eats so much garlic that I barely notice it anymore anyway.
