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Drink coffee black, and drink lots of water to stay hydrated.

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RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—If you’re someone who has to stand a good three feet away from your coworkers in the morning because their coffee-breath-infused conversations make you gag, you might be surprised by new research out of Israel suggesting certain components of coffee could actually freshen one’s breath. The findings were recently presented to members of the International Society for Breath Odor Research in Germany. That’s right, the International Society for Breath Odor.

THE DETAILS: Researchers used human saliva and mixed it with coffee in the laboratory and (surprisingly) found that the three brands tested—the Israeli brand Elite, Landwer Turkish coffee, and Taster’s Choice—actually inhibited the growth of bacteria that cause bad breath. “The lesson we learned here is one of humility,” says Mel Rosenberg, PhD, professor of microbiology at Tel Aviv University in Israel. He has studied bad breath for 20 years. “We expected coffee would cause bad breath, but there is something inside this magic brew that has the opposite effect.”

WHAT IT MEANS: Coffee may not be the bad-breath trigger it’s made out to be. This test was done in a petri dish, a very different setting from the more complicated environment inside our mouths. Still, Rosenberg says he hopes to isolate the bacteria-inhibiting molecule found in coffee, saying it could offer major (natural) antibacterial benefits that could knock down bad breath.