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Which nationality drinks the most tea in the world: Chinese or Japanese?

When asked about the people who drink the most tea, many might think of the Chinese or Japanese. For the third installment of our data-driven verification series, we looked into this topic.

Part 1: Does tea have more caffeine than coffee? Verifying urban legends about caffeine.  
Part 2: Is oolong tea the most consumed tea in China? – No, it’s green tea.

This time, we investigated which country drinks the most tea in the world. China, Japan, the UK, and India are likely candidates.

This time, we referred to the 2016 Statista data.

So, without further ado, here are the results!

1st place: Turkey (3.16 kg of tea leaves per person annually) 2nd place: Ireland (2.19 kg of tea leaves per person annually) 3rd place: The UK (1.94 kg of tea leaves per person annually)

This is quite surprising. By the way, Japan is 10th with 0.97 kg, and China is 19th with 0.57 kg.

These rankings are based on per capita consumption, so when comparing total national consumption, China is in first place. According to this statistic, China is the top tea-consuming country, with 95% of Chinese people identifying as tea drinkers and one-third drinking tea daily. However, the per capita tea consumption in China ranks 19th in the world.

There seems to be some numerical trickery at play here. It might be interesting to delve a bit deeper. If there are any requests, I would be happy to explore this further in a sequel.

Today, we learned that the people of Turkey drink a lot of tea, so I will conclude here. Thank you for joining me.

By the way, the world’s top three cuisines are Chinese, French, and Turkish. Truly impressive, Turkey.