The commonly accepted wisdom is that tea is the second most popular beverage in the world, after water. If you search widely online, you will find this claim repeated frequently—but solid proof is surprisingly difficult to pin down. I explored this idea previously in this examination of whether tea is truly the world’s second most consumed beverage, and found little concrete evidence to support it.
English Breakfast Tea No. 2 (ETS Image)
Even without definitive proof, the idea raises an interesting question: just how many people around the world actually drink tea? Before diving into research, I turned to commonly cited online statistics to see what consensus might exist.
One source, Statistic Brain, reports that “two billion people drink tea every morning.” According to this collection of global tea consumption statistics and estimates, annual tea production is also listed at around three million tons, though more recent figures suggest that production now exceeds four million tons worldwide.
These numbers raise some questions. While it is certainly possible that billions of people drink tea regularly, such round figures can be difficult to verify—especially when methodology and data sources are not clearly explained. The cited sources include industry groups and blogs, which may not provide fully transparent methodologies.
When it comes to individual countries, however, more specific statistics are available. The Tea Association of the USA estimates that over 158 million Americans drink tea on any given day. Similarly, the Tea Association of Canada reports that Canadians consume nearly nine billion cups annually. In the United Kingdom, the UK Tea Council estimates that about 66 percent of the population drinks tea daily—amounting to over 40 million people.
A broader perspective comes from global consumption data. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that roughly four million tons of tea were consumed worldwide in 2010. Converting that figure into cups suggests approximately 4.5 billion servings of tea consumed each day. If the average tea drinker consumes two cups daily, that would imply roughly 2.2 billion tea drinkers worldwide—a figure not far removed from the commonly cited two-billion estimate.
While the exact number of tea drinkers globally may remain uncertain, these estimates suggest that tea consumption is indeed widespread on a massive scale.
See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles in this archive of tea-related writing by the author.
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