If you want romance instead of rejection on Valentine’s Day — or any day — internationally-renowned bad breath guru Dr. Harold Katz has some advice for you.

To avoid bad breath, eat dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate, drink tea instead of coffee and stay away from alcohol.

But if you must have booze, try a sip of water in between your slurps of champagne or whatever.

Katz didn’t start investigating the situation because he’s a romantic, although he did admit Sunday that “Valentine’s Day is my busy season.”

The Los Angeles dentist began researching the problem 15 years ago when his then-13-year-old daughter was plagued by bad breath.

Using his daughter as a guinea pig, he discovered bad breath comes from anaerobic, sulphur-emitting bacteria.

Onions, garlic, cauliflower, cabbage and brussels sprouts have a high concentration of the sulphur compounds similar to the bad breath bugs, so they should also be avoided when romance is in the air.

Sugar, like in candy hearts, milk chocolate and alcohol, helps bacteria grow.

Get rid of the bacteria and the problem is solved.

“Saliva is nature’s way of keeping your breath fresh,” said Katz. “Saliva has a lot of oxygen in it.

“We found that an oxygenating formula literally put a straitjacket around these bacteria so they couldn’t produce the sulphur,” he said.

Katz now markets a selection of products under the TheraBreath brand to help with the problem.

But he goes a step further by helping people avoid the embarrassment of having to tell someone they have bad breath.

Go to the website therabreathcanada.com, fill out the form and Katz will email the unfortunate sufferer with the bad news — and ways to address the problem.

fluba@theprovince.com

twitter.com/frankluba