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Comment by soheil | Hacker News Reader

You'd probably be surprised to learn that the UK is not at the top of the list of countries with the highest tea consumption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tea_consu...

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Not even remotely surprised. I'm decently surprised they made it to number 4; I thought some southeast asian countries might have a higher per-capita tea consumption. Come to think of it, I think the list is probably highly skewed towards countries that import their tea and countries with local tea production will be a lot harder to pin down more accurately. Many countries missing from the list as well!

There are other "oddities" that make me suspicious. e.g. Saudi Arabia and UAE have extremely similar native population (bedouin Arab origins) and neither culturally drink black tea, but KSA ranks much higher than UAE. My immediate guess is the massive (underpaid) southeast asian labor force in KSA¹, which I know firsthand consume tea ceaselessly - but India supposedly has a lower per-capita consumption rate than the UAE. In fact, I'm sure both KSA and UAE are up there because of their foreign laborers, lending credence to my suspicion that countries with local tea production (such as India) are massively under-represented in that list.

¹: KSA does admittedly have a higher percentage of Levantine and North African permanent residents.

It's strange to me how low India is on the list. As an Indian all the Indians I know drink huge amounts of tea. Might just be an economics thing-- they can't afford to buy as much tea as they'd like to. That or it's something to do with the way the stats are collected

Actually, tea is about as cheap as clean water there. I commented separately, but tl;dr I think local tea consumption in countries that produce tea is being massively undercounted.

As an Indian living in the Netherlands, I suspect you're correct. Coffee is drunk here similar to how tea is drunk in India, and the Netherlands is the top #1/2 in per Capita coffee consumption. However, tea in India is often tied to a routine (eg time of day) while here it's more of an opportunistic thing (after a big meeting in the break).

Ireland is #2? As a culturally ignorant American, that _does_ surprise me.

We are absolute fiends for tea.

Just learned new slang for "whiskey". Thank you.

The box of Barry’s in my drawer (I’m in America) agrees with you

Ah go on, go on, go on.

I much prefer an Irish breakfast to an English breakfast tea. It’s stronger and has a distinct taste (although I didn’t like it as much initially.)

The source at the origin of the data is paywalled but there’s no way this is representative. Japan and Taiwan surely must have higher consumption than that. As someone else noted, wouldn’t be surprised if this is purely based on import statistics and therefore ignores domestic consumption.

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