Answer: Turkey

When pondering the list of possible answers to the question “Which country’s citizens consume the most tea?” you might think that it, naturally, must be the United Kingdom. After all, the love the British people have for tea is legendary. If not Britain, then surely a huge country with a long history of tea consumption like China, no? Surely one of the biggest countries on Earth with a high amount of local tea production drinks the most tea?

The highest tea consumption per capita in the world blows them out of the water though. The citizens of Turkey consume, on average, 266 ounces of tea leaves per person per year (if you add China and the UK together you only get 126 ounces per capita). Turkish consumption is so high, in fact, that the average amount of tea consumed (at 266 ounces) is just one ounce below the combined amount of the #2 and #3 consumers (Morocco at 153 ounces and Ireland at 114 ounces).

The high degree of tea consumption can be attributed to how deeply woven into the fabric of day-to-day life preparation and taking of tea is. Tea is offered to all visitors to the home, tea is offered to travelers, tea is offered to customers in shops (even if the shop doesn’t specialize in tea), and thousands of small tea shops and tea gardens dot the larger cities like Istanbul. All told, it’s more than common for a person to drink multiple cups of tea every day in a variety of settings from their own home, to their workplace, to socializing with friends after work.

Although tea is commonly served with sugar and milk or cream in Western countries, you’ll only find sugar offered in Turkey: to ask for milk in your tea would be as foreign and curious as asking for a big scoop of dirt.