Ordering a dish loaded with garlic or onions can be a commitment. The flavors can linger on the tongue long after a meal is over, no matter how many breath mints you pop.
But what actually causes a bad aftertaste — and is there any way to get rid of it?
Cordelia Running, director of the Saliva, Perception, Ingestion and Tongues (SPIT) lab at Purdue University, says that aftertastes are generally caused by “little bits of the actual flavor stimuli that might hang around”: physical remnants of food that get caught in the mouth, for example, or molecules that remain in the saliva or mucus.
