Bad breath is caused by bacteria (producing bad smelling gas) in the mouth. It is not what you had for your lunch – although garlic doesn’t help! And for some reason having bad breath has some sort of bad taboo and not even your closest friends seem to be able to tell you that you have a case of halitosis. And unfortunately, even if you breathe into your hand and sniff it you can’t smell your own breath so you’re stuck really. There are a couple of tips to help you keep your breath fresh.
Although mints and breath fresher will mask smelly breath (and they taste nice) it won’t get rid of the problem.
You need to use a mouth wash instead. These will help to kill the bad smelling germs. There are three different kinds of theories to trying to combat bad breath.
1.    Most generic mouthwashes will kill the germs but not all of them and grow back very quickly, so you are essentially again just making your breath smell nice like eating a mint. Product examples are Listerine
2.    Products such as TheraBreath which is an oxidizer will get rid of bad breath but again cannot stop germs from producing.
3.    Products that use Zinc ion systems can prevent bad breath from coming back. Try SmartMouth.