Something in chocolate could be used to stop coughs and lead to more effective medicines, say UK researchers.

Their study found that theobromine, found in cocoa, was nearly a third more effective in stopping coughs than codeine, which was considered the best cough medicine at present.

The Imperial College London researchers who published their results online said the discovery could lead to more effective cough treatment. “While coughing is not necessarily harmful,   it can have a major effect on the quality of life, and this discovery could be a huge step forward in treating this problem,” said Professor Peter Barnes.

Ten healthy volunteers were given theobromine, codeine or placebo, a pill that contains no medicine, during the experiment. Neither the volunteers nor the researchers knew who received which pill. The researchers then measured levels of capsaicin, which is used in research to cause coughing and as a sign of how well the medicine are stopping coughs.

The team found that, when the volunteers were given theobromine, the capsaicin need to produce a cough was around a third higher than in the placebo group. When they were given codeine they need only slightly higher levers of capsaicin to cause a cough compared with the placebo.

The researchers said that theobromine worked by keeping down a verve activity(神经活动), which cause coughing. They also found that unlike some standard cough treatments, theobromine caused no side effects such as sleepiness.

As people are becoming more socially conscious about where their food comes from and how it impacts the planet, they are choosing animal-free plant-based options. Cow-free meat has been around for quite some time and the popularity of brands of the cultivated (培育的) meat is rising. While there are a large number of plant-based milk substitutes (替代品), none of them have the same taste of cow’s milk. Now, a food-tech company created real dairy products without harming a single cow or the planet.

The company stresses that their product produced in the lab is not a milk substitute but rather is the real deal. And it is very healthy. The company also says that the lab-produced milk tastes identical to the real thing and they hope to eventually replace cows by creating every dairy product sold. They expect to roll out plant-based cheese and yogurt in addition to milk. “Our company was founded with the mission to stop using animals to produce our food because, as dairy lovers, we realize that giving up on milk is not an option,” John said. “But today’s milk comes with an unreasonable price tag. The dairy industry is destructive to our planet, our health, and our animals, simply not sustainable (可持续的) anymore. ”

The environmental price tag of dairy farming is way too high. According to the World Wildlife Fund, dairy cows add a huge amount of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and contribute to global warming and climate change as well as pollute the air around them. Dairy operations consume large amounts of water and run-off of manure (粪肥) and fertilizers from these farms get into local waterways. The production uses only 5 percent of the resources and produces only 1 percent of the waste of producing cow’s milk according to the company. And they accomplish this by being 100 percent cruelty-free unlike dairy farms.

More than 3/4 of the Southeast Asia population is agriculture-based. Twice as much fish is consumed in this area compared to other forms of animal protein, reflecting the long coastlines and river environments of Southeast Asia. The staple food(主粮) throughout the area is rice, which has been planted for thousands of years. Rice serves as the basic staple food for more than half of the world’s population today.

In Asia, there are different styles of eating food. In India and the Middle East, as well as Southeast Asia, people eat food with their hands. It is a very direct way to experience the texture(口感) of the food, and people normally wash their hands before and after each meal. Normally, only the right hand is used, so that one knows to keep it especially clean. Generally, the foods to be eaten are placed on plates in the center of the mat or table, and people take food in small portions(一份) as they eat.

The exception to this pattern is Vietnam, where the influence of China was much stronger than anywhere else in Southeast Asia. Here, each person has chopsticks, and food is served and divided among people onto individual plates or into individual bowls. A similar pattern is found in other Asian countries where Chinese influence was especially strong,e. g. Japan, Korea and so on.

The influence of Western cultures is found not only in the use of tables and chairs in many modern Southeast Asian households, but also in the use of spoons and forks. Knives are not necessary, since meat and vegetables are cut into smaller portions before cooking or serving. A large spoon is held in the right hand, while the left hand is used to shovel food into the spoon.