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.
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