Take your coffeee black

For sweet breath, don't have milk with your coffee--because coffee beans contain compounds that prevent bacteria releasing the gases behind halitosis, (bad breath) research shows.

Pinpointing the key chemicals could lead to coffee 'mints' or pastilles that stop bad breath at the source.

Adding black coffee to 'soups' of bacteria-filled saliva blocked the release of gases that cause breath to smell. In some cases, the amount of gas was cut by up to 90 per cent.

The researcher said: ' We expected that coffee would cause bad breath but there is something inside this magic brew that has the opposite effect.'