How many cups of tea are drunk in the UK each day?

How to get close to this number

Multiply population by a per-person rate. The country has tens of millions of people, and the explanation puts the average at about one and a half cups each — which sounds low for the national stereotype but is right once you include everyone who drinks none. Population times a modest per-person figure gives a total in the hundreds of millions.

The stereotype is what causes overestimation. A reputation for tea drinking does not translate into extraordinary per-capita consumption, and as this site's companion question shows, Britain is not even the world leader per person. Cultural association and measured behaviour diverge in almost every national food question, and this is the classic example.

The history in the explanation is worth more than the number. Tea only became a mass drink here in the eighteenth century, and it arrived on the same colonial trade routes that made sugar cheap enough to put in it. A national habit that feels timeless is roughly three centuries old and was built on a specific trading system — which is a useful corrective to the idea that traditions are ancient by default.