diamond geezer

 Monday, December 09, 2024

Yesterday the BBC website had a story about the amount of tea people aren't drinking any more.

It seems younger people aren't drinking as much tea as older people, or as much as younger people used to. Instead they favour coffee, soft drinks and energy drinks, and when they do drink tea it's often green tea, herbal tea or bubble tea, not traditional black tea. 18 year-old Sharma, for example, said she prefers herbal tea and hasn't even heard of Typhoo because "there are so many drinks now”.

The article came with a nice graph.



When it comes to retail sales coffee is way out in front with £2.2bn spent annually, including £1bn on instant, while tea limps behind with £0.6bn. In the UK market roughly the same is spent on standard black tea as on ready-to-drink coffee, while total tea sales are almost identical to what's spent on coffee pods. There is indeed more money in coffee than in tea.

But sales are not the same as volume - for example a coffee pod is hugely more expensive than a humble tea bag, yet both produce one drink. What we need are better statistics... and thankfully the BBC story linked to some courtesy of the UK Family Food Survey, in a proper analysable spreadsheet.

Quantity purchased for UK households (average grams per person per week)
Tea: 19g
Coffee beans and ground coffee: 13g
Instant coffee: 10g
Cocoa and chocolate drinks: 5g

19g is approximately equal to 10 tea bags, i.e, the average Briton gets through 10 teabags in a week, or 1½ per day. Meanwhile a combination of 13g of beans and 10g of instant means the average Briton drinks about 7 cups of coffee a week at home, or 1 a day. You are not an average Briton which'll be why these figures don't reflect your consumption.

But that's hot drinks within the home, what about hot drinks purchased elsewhere?

Quantity consumed outside the home (average millilitres per person per week)
Coffee: 40ml
Tea: 12ml
Hot chocolate or cocoa: 5ml

That's not very much tea or coffee, maybe one takeaway coffee a month or four nice cups of tea in a cafe every year. The Family Food Survey admits that some of those completing food diaries may be under-reporting, but if you think those numbers are low remember that for every London commuter mainlining caffeine there's a provincial pensioner who never ventures anywhere near a Costa.

All this data suggests that Britons do still drink more tea than coffee, indeed other statistics concur, but collectively we spend a lot more on the bean than the leaf.

And because these consumer survey spreadsheets contain annual data going back to 1974, I can do you a running summary of purchases over time...

	1974	1984	1994	2004	2014	2023
Tea (at home)	68g	55g	41g	31g	25g	19g
Coffee (at home)	20g	21g	18g	17g	20g	23g
Tea (out of home)	n/a	n/a	n/a	44ml	30ml	12ml
Coffee (out of home)	n/a	n/a	n/a	91ml	80ml	40ml

Coffee consumption at home has held up fairly well over the last 50 years, but tea consumption is considerably down over the same period across the board. I confess I was expecting takeaway coffee to have risen but instead it's dropped, although this may have something to do with the pandemic because it was fairly steady until then. Also the final year in the table had runaway inflation so perhaps don't read too much into those takeaway figures.

How about other drinks? This is home consumption per week.

	1974	1984	1994	2004	2014	2023
Soft drinks	n/a	n/a	1513ml	1933ml	1546ml	1500ml
Bottled water	n/a	8ml	125ml	236ml	341ml	374ml
Alcohol	n/a	n/a	552ml	792ml	675ml	623ml

Soft drink consumption peaked in 2004, according to the complete set of figures. Bottled water was an irrelevance in 1974 but continues to grow in popularity. Home alcohol consumption has been a little more consistent.

Here's a history of UK health habits through weekly milk consumption.

	1974	1984	1994	2004	2014	2023
Full fat milk	2687ml	2064ml	877ml	602ml	263ml	295ml
Semi-skimmed	3ml	114ml	880ml	926ml	1045ml	711ml
Skimmed	2ml	76ml	212ml	154ml	154ml	112ml
Non-dairy	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	37ml	110ml

And the household survey doesn't just do liquids. Here's raw meat.

	1974	1984	1994	2004	2014	2023
Beef	189g	161g	118g	119g	101g	85g
Lamb	113g	93g	54g	49g	37g	22g
Pork	91g	93g	77g	56g	57g	37g
Chicken	115g	152g	160g	168g	186g	193g
Liver	36g	31g	11g	5g	3g	2g

Other than chicken, meat's been very much on a downward trend over the last 50 years.

Here are some more foodstuffs in decline...

	1974	1984	1994	2004	2014	2023
Butter	147g	75g	36g	35g	40g	34g
Sugar	458g	320g	178g	102g	78g	51g
Potatoes	1437g	1293g	1084g	864g	671g	578g
Bread	1019g	935g	820g	728g	555g	465g
Baked beans	100g	124g	109g	89g	80g	61g
Apples	207g	201g	186g	171g	131g	93g

...and here are some on the rise.

	1974	1984	1994	2004	2014	2023
Yoghurt	33ml	81ml	123ml	158ml	175ml	160ml
Pasta	31g	35g	33g	83g	87g	103g
Rice	17g	31g	41g	80g	103g	98g
Pizza	0g	16g	38g	67g	75g	85g
Ice cream	43ml	102ml	123ml	193ml	165ml	178ml
Bananas	84g	86g	169g	211g	221g	180g

Reassuringly some foods haven't changed much.

	1974	1984	1994	2004	2014	2023
Fish	123g	140g	148g	156g	144g	126g
Cakes	184g	145g	175g	164g	147g	161g
Fresh veg	1141g	1187g	1161g	1079g	1080g	1061g

Hopefully our kilogram of fresh vegetables each week helps balance out all those cakes, buns and pastries.

Anyway, that was the rabbithole I fell down after reading about how Sharma and her friends aren't drinking much tea any more. If you're similarly intrigued feel free to dig deep into the official spreadsheet to explore long-term trends in food and beverage consumption, perhaps over a nice cup of tea.

posted 07:00 :

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