Fight Mouthwash Eat Garlic!

Fight mouthwash, Eat garlic!

Bastille Day Cancelled in Berkeley: Usually, Berkeley, home to thousands of Francophile gastronomes, celebrates the French Revolution’s anniversary on July 14 with increased consumption of garlic. Most notably, and most extravagantly at the Chez Panisse Garlic Festival.

I helped produce the celebration in 1976 after publishing The Book of Garlic in 1974 and launching the Lovers of the Stinking Rose garlic fan club.
This year’s plan for the festival, pre-Covid, was to honor Gilroy’s garlic festival in the wake of last year's mass shootings, the 40th anniversary of Les Blank’s marvelous film, Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers, the 44th anniversary of Chez Panisse’s garlic gala, and the 46th anniversary of The Book of Garlic's publication. (See you all in 2021.)

The Garlic Revolution’s motto, announced in our club newsletter, Garlic Times, was Fight Mouthwash, Eat Garlic™.

This was a clove in cheek response to the newly launched product, Signal Mouthwash, from Lever Brothers and their marketing propaganda that labeled garlic breath “The worst bad breath in America.”

I debated a Lever Bros. chemist on TV in New York in the late 70s, arguing that to truly kill the lingering odor of garlic one would have to bathe in Signal Mouthwash because garlic’s sulfides are released through the pores in human sweat.

Mouthwash companies have continued to identify garlic breath as “the worst” despite the huge increase in garlic consumption in America following the revolution. Now, however, one detects a shift in corporate mouthwash strategy tuned to the rising popularity of garlic and garlic health supplements like Garlique.

The newest mouthwash ad campaign on TV is for SmartMouth, a product aimed at “sulfur gas,” not any particular sulfur-containing food like garlic. Sulfur gas is naturally produced by oral bacteria, especially from high protein foods, and some people produce more of it than others.

So chalk up another victory for our on-going garlic revolution, the destigmatization of garlic breath as bad breath. Better late than never.