When it comes to bad breath, or halitosis, many people turn to breath mints. These are easy to get, relatively inexpensive, and they tend to taste like candy, so they're very appealing. There's only one problem: they don't work very well.

Sure, if your halitosis is the kind that's caused by eating garlic, curry, or onions, you might get away with breath mints. If your breath smells bad because you just enjoyed a cigarette, a good strong peppermint candy may get you through any close encounters with friends or co-workers. But if your halitosis is the kind that smells like rotten eggs, even the best breath mints won't do very much good.

When halitosis is severe, the best breath mints really don't seem to cover it very well - they may produce a strong mint taste and smell for a minute or two, but the mint taste quickly fades and you're back to the same old bad smell on your breath. In order to keep your breath wholesome, you have to suck the mints virtually one after another.

The truth is that most breath mints just mask the odor that's on your breath: they don't do anything to treat the underlying problem, which is the production of volatile sulfur compounds by bacteria living in your mouth. The very best breath mints available at the grocery store or pharmacy do nothing to decrease the numbers of these bacteria. Some producers of natural remedies, however, claim that their products act on the bacteria and don't just cover up the smell.

If using ordinary mints makes you feel more self-assured, even though it won't have any lasting effect, the best breath mints are probably the ones with a very very strong mint flavor, such as Altoids. These are readily available and quite small, so that you can tuck one into your mouth and most people will not even know you have anything there. If you need extra help, you can pop two in your mouth at once.

If you'd like to try a remedy that claims to actually help reduce the bad breath problem, you could try one of the Therabreath products, available on the internet. Whatever you choose as the best breath mints for your lifestyle, combine them with a program of treatment to reduce your halitosis where it starts, so you won't need to rely on mints so much in the future.