7.11 am breakfast 'perfect recipe' for weight-loss success

The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown saw many people turning chefs overnight, but those who could not turned to online delivery of food. And not just any food, as per a new report, Indians "craved the most for Biryani" during the lockdown.

The "StatEATistics report: The Quarantine Edition" from food delivery platform Swiggy found that Indians ordered biryani over "5.5 lakh times" from their favourite restaurants.

The new normal might have opened a pandora's box of behavioral changes, but some old habits die hard like the love for Biryani, which took the top spot for overall orders. It was followed by butter naan and masala dosa at 3,35,185 and 3,31,423, respectively.

Biryani has topped the list of most ordered dishes for the fourth year in a row, the food delivery platform noted.

Indians didn't forget to indulge their sweet tooth in the uncertain months of lockdown. Their favourite comfort food during the lockdown period was the moist and decadent Choco Lava cake, ordered around 1,29,000 times.

"The humble Gulab Jamun (84,558) and chic Butterscotch Mousse cake (27,317) followed suit," said the report derived from Swiggy's order analysis in the past few months across cities that it is present in.

Also, as birthday parties moved to video calls, and virtual cake cutting sessions, according to the food delivery platform, it delivered nearly "1,20,000 cakes" to complete these celebrations.

According to the report, on average, "65,000 meal orders" were placed by 8 pm each day to make sure food arrived in time for dinner.

"It was the busiest hour for Swiggy delivery partners and restaurants. On average, they (customers) chose to tip Rs.23.65, with one particularly generous customer tipping Rs. 2500!," it added.

For those who only relied on home-made food during the quarantine, Swiggy delivered a whooping 323 million kgs of onions and 56 million kgs of bananas through its grocery section and hence ensured that its consumers were all stocked up.

That said, it also took care of the 'quick-fix meal' tribe -- consumers who resort to the evergreen college hacks of living on instant noodles.

"Around 3,50,000 packets of this ideal easy to cook meal were ordered during the lockdown," it said.

In all, Swiggy delivered 40 million orders across food, groceries, medicines and other household items during India's lockdowns. It also delivered over 73,000 bottles of sanitizers and hand wash along with 47,000 face masks as the definition of essentials' changed during these uncertain times.

New York, May 19: Cigarette smoke spurs the lungs to make more of the receptor protein which the novel coronavirus uses to enter human cells, according to a study which suggests that quitting smoking might reduce the risk of a severe coronavirus infection.

The findings, published in the journal Developmental Cell, may explain why smokers appear to be particularly vulnerable to severe COVID-19 disease.

"Our results provide a clue as to why smokers who develop COVID-19 tend to have poor clinical outcomes," said study senior author Jason Sheltzer, a cancer geneticist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the US.

"We found that smoking caused a significant increase in the expression of ACE2, the protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter human cells," Sheltzer said.

According to the scientists, quitting smoking might reduce the risk of a severe coronavirus infection.

They said most individuals infected with the virus suffer only mild illness, if they experience any at all.

However, some require intensive care when the sometimes-fatal virus attacks, the researchers said.

In particular, they said three groups have been significantly more likely than others to develop severe illness -- men, the elderly, and smokers.

Turning to previously published data for possible explanations for these disparities, the scientists assessed if vulnerable groups share some key features related to the human proteins that the coronavirus relies on for infection.

First, they said, they focused on comparing gene activity in the lungs across different ages, between the sexes, and between smokers and nonsmokers.

The scientists said both mice that had been exposed to smoke in a laboratory, and humans who were current smokers had significant upregulation of ACE2.

According to Sheltzer, smokers produced 30-55 per cent more ACE2 than their non-smoking counterparts.

While the researchers found no evidence that age or sex impacts ACE2 levels in the lungs, they said the influence of smoke exposure was surprisingly strong.

However, they said, the change seemed to be temporary.

According to the data, the level of the receptors ACE2 in the lungs of people who had quit smoking was similar to that of non-smokers.

The study noted that the most prolific producers of ACE2 in the airways are mucus-producing cells called goblet cells.

Smoking is known to increase the prevalence of such cells, the scientists said.

"Goblet cells produce mucous to protect the respiratory tract from inhaled irritants. Thus, the increased expression of ACE2 in smokers' lungs could be a byproduct of smoking-induced secretory cell hyperplasia," Sheltzer explained.

However, Sheltzer said other studies on the effects of cigarette smoke have shown mixed results.

"Cigarette smoke contains hundreds of different chemicals. It's possible that certain ingredients like nicotine have a different effect than whole smoke does," he said.

The researchers cautioned that the actual ACE2 protein may be regulated in ways not addressed in the current study.

"One could imagine that having more cells that express ACE2 could make it easier for SARS-CoV-2 to spread in someone's lungs, but there is still a lot more we need to explore," Sheltzer said.

Global poverty could rise to over one billion people due to the COVID-19 pandemic and more than half of the 395 million additional extreme poor would be located in South Asia, which would be the hardest-hit region in the world, according to a new report.

Researchers from King's College London and Australian National University published the new paper with the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) said that poverty is likely to increase dramatically in middle-income developing countries and there could be a significant change in the distribution of global poverty.

The location of global poverty could shift back towards developing countries in South Asia and East Asia, the report said.

The paper, 'Precarity and the Pandemic: COVID-19 and Poverty Incidence, Intensity and Severity in Developing Countries,' finds that extreme poverty could rise to over one billion people globally as a result of the crisis.

The cost of the crisis in lost income could reach USD 500 million per day for the world's poorest people, and the intensity and severity of poverty are likely to be exacerbated dramatically.

The report said that based on the USD 1.90 a day poverty line and a 20 per cent contraction, more than half of the 395 million additional extreme poor would be located in South Asia, which would become the hardest hit region in the world mainly driven by the weight of populous India followed by sub-Saharan Africa which would comprise 30 per cent, or 119 million, of the additional poor.

The report added that as the value of the poverty line increases, a larger share of the additional poor will be concentrated in regions where the corresponding poverty line is more relevant given the average income level.

For instance, the regional distribution of the world's poor changes drastically when looking at the USD 5.50 a day poverty line the median poverty line among upper-middle-income countries.

At this level, almost 41 per cent of the additional half a billion poor under a 20 per cent contraction scenario would live in East Asia and the Pacific, chiefly China; a fourth would still reside in South Asia; and a combined 18 per cent would live in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), whose individual shares are close to that recorded for sub-Saharan Africa.

India plays a significant role in driving the potential increases in global extreme poverty documented previously, comprising almost half the estimated additional poor regardless of the contraction scenario, the report said.

Nonetheless, there are other populous, low and lower-middle- income countries in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and East Asia and the Pacific accounting for a sizeable share of the estimates: Nigeria, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Indonesia come next, in that order, concentrating a total of 18 19 per cent of the new poor, whereas the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda, and the Philippines could jointly add 11 12 per cent.

Taken together, these figures imply that three quarters of the additional extreme poor globally could be living in just ten populous countries.

The report added that this high concentration of the additional extreme poor is staggering , although not necessarily unexpected given the size of each country's population.

On one hand, data shows that three of these ten countries (Ethiopia, India, and Nigeria) were among the top ten by number of extreme poor people in 1990 and remained within the ranks of that group until 2018.

Despite this crude fact, two of these countries have managed to achieve a sustained reduction in their incidence of poverty since the early 1990s, namely Ethiopia and India, reaching their lowest poverty headcount ratio ever recorded at about 22 and 13 per cent, respectively. Nonetheless, the potential contraction in per capita income/consumption imposed by the pandemic's economic effects could erase some of this progress.

The researchers are now calling for urgent global leadership from the G7, G20, and the multilateral system, and propose a three-point plan to address the impact of the COVID-19 on global poverty quickly.

Professor of International Development at King's College London and a Senior Non-Resident Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER Andy Sumner said the COVID-19 crisis could take extreme poverty back over one billion people because millions of people live just above poverty.

Millions of people live in a precarious position one shock away from poverty. And the current crisis could be that shock that pushes them into poverty.

Professor Kunal Sen, Director of UNU-WIDER said the new estimates about the level of poverty in the world and the cost of the COVID-19 pandemic to the world's poor are sobering.

We cannot stand by and see the hard work and effort of so many be eradicated. We will know what the real impact is in time, but the necessary action to ensure we achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 needs to be planned now, Sen said.