“Who’s getting the teas in?” It’s one of the most frequently asked questions in all British offices, with our collective love for a good brew ranking us among the biggest tea consuming nations on the planet.
But who’s pipped us to the title?
As the map above shows, it’s Paraguay that tops the charts. According to data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (for 2011, the most recent available), the average citizen of the South American works their way through 12.22kg of tea in a typical year. Mate tea, a caffeine-rich infusion popular throughout the continent, accounts for the vast majority of that figure, and a couple of its neighbours – Uruguay and Argentina – complete the podium.
Also surpassing the UK, which is 12th overall, are a few former British colonies: The Gambia, Kenya, Malta and Afghanistan.
The top 20 tea-consuming nations (including mate)
- Paraguay – 12.22kg per capita per year
- Uruguay – 9.66kg
- Argentina – 6.05kg
- Kenya – 3.24kg
- The Gambia – 3.22kg
- Djibouti – 3.2kg
- Kuwait – 3.2kg
- Turkey – 3.11kg
- Mauritania – 2.63kg
- Malta – 2.24kg
- Afghanistan – 2.17kg
- United Kingdom – 2.06kg
- Morocco – 2kg
- Brazil – 1.99kg
- Macao – 1.97kg
- Ireland – 1.88kg
- Taiwan – 1.85kg
- Iran – 1.83kg
- Kazakhstan – 1.81kg
- Chile – 1.61kg
Should your colleagues hail from Lesotho, Haiti or Cuba, don’t expect them to get the next round. According to the UN organisation’s statistics, these countries consume negligible amounts of tea (the figure is rounded to 0.0kg per person per year).
Other tea-fearing nations include Serbia, Cambodia, Jamaica, Mexico and Croatia.
What about coffee?
Which country is most fond of the coffee bean? We’ve also mapped the world according to coffee consumption per capita – and it’s the Finns that come out on top. They grind their way through an impressive 12kg per person per year, according to stats from the International Coffee Organization. Finland’s northern European neighbours are just as hungry for java. Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Sweden also make the top 10 – it must be those long winters. The US comes 26th, while the UK turns up at number 45.
The world’s 20 biggest coffee drinkers
- Finland – 12kg per capita per year
- Norway – 9.9
- Iceland – 9
- Denmark – 8.7
- Netherlands – 8.4
- Sweden – 8.2
- Switzerland – 7.9
- Belgium – 6.8
- Luxembourg – 6.5
- Canada – 6.2
- Bosnia and Herzegovina – 6.1
- Austria – 5.9
- Italy – 5.8
- Slovenia – 5.8
- Brazil – 5.5
- Germany – 5.5
- Greece – 5.4
- France – 5.1
- Croatia – 4.9
- Cyprus – 4.8
Courtesy telegraph.co.uk
