Health Digest Survey: Which Is People's Preferred Brand Of Cough Drops?

When you can't seem to shake that tickle in your throat, the resulting cough and irritation can make it difficult to get through your day. Nothing makes those hours spent at the office more exhausting than having to pause every few minutes for a coughing fit. Enter cough drops. Also referred to as throat lozenges, cough drops give off a cooling effect to help ease the discomfort of a sore throat, explains Healthline. This is achieved through the use of menthol — a combination of eucalyptus and peppermint, amongst other essential oils. Certain cough drops may also contain benzocaine in order to numb the area. 

Medicated cough drops generally contain anywhere between 5 milligrams and 10 milligrams of diluted menthol (via Medical News Today). However, some cough drop products are void of medication altogether and instead utilize soothing flavors, such as honey, to help calm aggravated airway passages, per Healthline. To figure out which brand of cough drops people most prefer to use when dealing with a cough or sore throat, we asked more than 600 Health Digest readers which product they reach for when they're feeling under the weather. Here's what they chose out of six possible answer options.

The answer with the least amount of selections was Zarbee's. With 19 votes, this answer made up a little over 3% of total responses. Next was Vick's, which received 40 votes and accounted for 6.56% of total respondent answers. With nine more votes was Cepacol, garnering just over 8% of the total votes.

An uptick in numbers was observed after that, with 102 participants selecting Lunden's as their go-to cough drop brand. Designed for everyday use, Luden's offers a variety of cough drop products and flavors ranging from watermelon, to honey lemon, to wild cherry, as per their website. The top two answer choices amongst respondents came down to Ricola and Halls. In second place was Ricola, making up nearly 29% of total responses with 176 votes. Made with a host of Swiss Alpine herbs, the company offers cough drop products that soothe the throat and relieve cough simultaneously by using extra menthol ingredients (via Ricola). The winning answer selection amongst participants, however, was Halls cough drops with 224 votes, accounting for 36.72% of total responses. As the leading cough drop brand in the country, they offer a wide range of products for cough relief, sore throats, and cooling of the nasal passages.