British National Tea Day Betting Odds - SportsBettingExperts.com

Written by Jim Murphy

–British National Tea Day is celebrated on April 28.

–Tea is second only to water as the world’s most consumed beverage.

–Tea was discovered in 2737 BC by Chinese Emperor Shen-Nung.

British National Tea Day is coming up on Friday, April 28th. Despite the occasional scare article that England is becoming a ‘nation of coffee drinkers’ the British still love their tea. In 2016, 84% of UK citizens enjoyed tea on a daily basis. Based on the data, they enjoyed it several times a day–since the British consume 60 billion cups a year that means 900 cups annually for every man, woman and child in Great Britain which translates to almost three cups a day.

Anthropologist Kate Fox suggests that it’s more than just the taste. According to her, it’s a ‘social space filler’ for Brits much in the same way that some cultures drink beer or smoke cigarettes:

“Tea-making is the perfect displacement activity: whenever the English feel awkward or uncomfortable in a social situation (that is, almost all the time), they make tea.”

Fox details the significance of seemingly meaningless details such as adding milk to tea (the overwhelming majority of Brits do) or a spoonful of sugar (the majority of Brits don’t):

“Taking sugar in your tea is regarded by many as an infallible lower-class indicator: even one spoonful is a bit suspect (unless you were born before about 1955); more than one and you are lower-middle at best; more than two and you are definitely working class.”

Another suggestion for tea’s importance is tangentially related–it’s the ritual as much as the taste or as one unnamed food scientist quoted by the BBC explained:

“In my opinion, food choices are driven by one’s environment – the context. You like what you like not necessarily because of any intrinsic quality, though obviously one can develop a taste for almost anything. A food or drink’s real importance in your life may be because of everything the surrounds it – the culture of it.”

The United States drinks a fair amount of tea but nothing like the British. 22% of Americans drink tea daily but a serious aficionado would suggest that most don’t ‘really count’ since 80% of tea consumed in the US is sweetened ice tea. That’s an anathema to the Brits.

At SPORTS BETTING EXPERTS we’re going to celebrate British National Tea Day with some proposition betting odds on several aspects of world tea consumption. Not to put a damper on the day in the UK but Great Britain doesn’t even rank in the top ten worldwide!