London: A new book has revealed a lot about the evolution of tea culture in our society.
According to the book, on average as a nation UK has been consuming 165 million cups per day or 62 billion cups per year; over 25 per cent of all the milk consumed in the UK goes in your cups of tea, the Daily Express reported.
Our culture has been infused with tea and tea-time, tea was everywhere: afternoon tea, high tea, tea gowns, tea cakes, tea towels, tea gardens, tea dances, Lyons tea houses, tea-time, tea services, tea breaks, tea for two, storms in tea cups, builders' tea, and more tea. Boy George had quoted that he preferred a cup of tea to sex to the children's favourite story book, 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea.' The Beatles had wooed Lovely Rita Meter Maid with it; for The Kinks it has been ''a cure for hepatitis, it's a cure for chronic insomnia, it's a cure for tonsillitis and for water on the knee" in the group's song 'Have A Cuppa Tea.'
The author George Orwell had said that tea was one of the "mainstays of civilisation" that was ruined by sweetening and that anyone flouting this diktat on shunning the sugar bowl could not be called "a true tea-lover". The books has also revealed the introduction of tea in British culture, the world's very first tea break, discovery of herbal tea and the idea of sending samples of tea out in small silk bags.
