French Kiss is Gross, Study Shows

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Ok, French people: it’s time to stop bragging about the awesome kissing technique you invented. A Dutch study has revealed that during a ten-second “intimate kiss” (ya know, the kind with tongue that we affectionately call the French kiss), two people exchange about 80 million bacteria.

Now you may be asking yourself, “Exactly how did they conduct this study? And is there a funny video that goes with it?” Well, we haven’t heard of any video, but the description of the “controlled kissing experiment” isn’t incredibly sexy, what with all the scientific vocab flying around.

21 couples were interviewed about their kissing habits (how often they kissed, when was the last time, etc.), and the saliva of each individual was sampled by scientists before and after a long kiss and evaluated for bacterial quantity and quality.

Then, it was snack time: each participant was given a yogurt drink containing a bacterial marker. And what goes better with yogurt than more kissing? (Does this remind anyone of a French dairy commercial from about a decade ago?) Then the scientists counted how many of the little active cultures made it from one mouth to another.

Not surprisingly, couples who kiss a lot share a lot of bacteria, but it turns out that many of them don’t last too long on the tongue’s surface, while others are able to engage in “long term colonization.”

Hoping to engage in some long-term colonization of your own? We suggest forgetting everything you’ve just read.

 

 

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