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Israeli boffin invents "OkayToKiss™" pocket bad-breath test

Check before you neck

Top Israeli stinks boffins have developed a small breathalyser-style test device which can accurately tell a user if he or she has bad breath, putting an end to the stress and uncertainty of the unreliable blow-in-your-hand method. The new test is dubbed "OkayToKiss".

OkayToKiss comes to us from the fertile brain of Professor Mel Rosenberg of Tel Aviv university, described the "international authority on the diagnosis and treatment of bad breath". Prof Rosenberg is, needless to say, editor of the Journal of Breath Research. He is also the inventor of the apparently well-known "two-phase mouthwash".

It seems that the OkayToKiss test would be distributed in pocket packaging about "the size of a pack of chewing gum". In order to check for acceptable oral fragrancy, one would unobtrusively "dab a little bit of saliva onto a small window of the OkayToKiss kit".

If unpleasant bacteria of the sort that lead to bad breath are present, the test kit will turn blue - in which case the user, forewarned, can temporarily postpone any unwise plans to breathe on people, emit a gusty sigh, move in for a romantic smooch etc (at any rate until after an emergency swig at a pocket flask of two-phase mouthwash or similar).

The prof says OkayToKiss is better than other pocket pong tests as it tests for Gram-positive bacteria as well as Gram-negative ones. Previously, breath boffins had thought that only the latter were an issue in terms of oral aroma; but it seems that in fact Gram-positives "are bad breath's bacterial partner".

These and other fascinating insights will apparently be available in Professor Rosenberg's new book, Save Your Breath, in which he has "summarized his twenty years of research and experience on bad breath".

It sounds like a hilarious, laugh-out-loud-on-the-train read. Provided one's checked one's breath, anyway. OkayToKiss will be good to go in a year, according to the Professor. ®

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