For any consumable product, there will naturally some country that uses the most of it per capita. But even acknowledging that, Scandinavian consumption of coffee seems remarkably high to me:
Eight cups seems like a large amount. I have three, sometimes four cups a day and I feel like I am a heavy coffee drinker. Which I am, sort of, for the US:
But what makes this even more mind-boggling is the fact that per capita consumption obviously includes light drinkers and those who do not drink coffee at all (presumably there must be at least some of those in Scandinavia, right?). So there almost has to be a pretty large contingent of Scandinavians who are drinking ten-plus cups of coffee per day, every day. Just, wow.
Winter days are extremely short in much of Scandinavia. When the sun rises at 10 and sets at 2, maybe you need lots of caffeine to stay functional.
Also, you should factor in that European coffee is, in general, about 2X the strength of typical American diner brew. Yes, thankfully, it is not too hard to find decent coffee in the US, but it is still not the norm when you walk in to Denny’s at 2am.
Finland 12.0 kg
Norway 9.9 kg
Iceland 9.0 kg
Denmark 8.7 kg
Netherlands 8.4 kg
Sweden 8.2 kg
Switzerland 7.9 kg
Belgium 6.8 kg
Canada 6.5 kg
Bosnia and Herzegovina 6.2 kg
Austria 6.1 kg
The US comes in around 4.2. Could be the easy availability of orange/fruit/milk in the US, but that is only supposition on my part.
How is ‘cup’ being defined? If you go by a typical (U.S.) coffee maker, a ‘cup’ is six ounces. I think most people here drink coffee from mugs, so a ‘cup’ of coffee is like 10 or 12 ounces.
On telecommuting days and weekends, I generally make two pots of coffee in an urn that is marked ‘12 cups’. The SO drinks two, or sometimes three, 6 ounce cups of coffee; and I drink the rest. Am I drinking 21 or 22 ‘cups’ of coffee? Or am I drinking a lower number of ‘cups’, because I use a mug? (FWIW, on commuting days I only drink two 20 oz. cups on the way to work, and one ‘10 cup’ or ‘12 cup’ (I forget which) pot of coffee.)
Maybe there’s minorities in the US that don’t culturally drink as much coffee as others? Finland is getting more immigrants every year but we are still very homogenous country at the moment.
(North) Indians and Pakistanis are all about the tea. Coffee is hardly found outside of South Indian cuisine. East Asians, Persians, Central Asians, and Russians are all about the tea too. Arabs and Turks are practically synonymous with coffee drinking, historically at least, but ironically in the present day tea is more popular among Middle Easterners overall. Younger generations of Americans tend to shun coffee in favor of caffeinated soda pop.
If you are simply looking at the top of the list, then duhhh, of course it will look remarkably high. As you said yourself, someone has to be at the top of this list.
To talk intelligently about this, we need a list which shows many countries, so that we can compare them. Fortunately, Grey gave us a link to exactly such a list. And, as one should expect, someone is at the top, and someone is at the bottom, and the middle is pretty well distributed.
Except for the very top of that list:
Rank Country Consumption
1 Finland 12.0 kg
2 Norway 9.9 kg
3 Iceland 9.0 kg
4 Denmark 8.7 kg
5 Netherlands 8.4 kg
6 Sweden 8.2 kg
I think it is rather amazing. Denmark is 3.6% higher than Netherlands, and Iceland is 3.4% higher than Denmark. But Norway is a full 10% higher than Iceland, and the #1-ranking Finland uses a whopping 21% more coffee than the runner-up!
And note that all six of these are in (or very close to) Scandinavia. If we’d compare “All of Scandinavia” to “The Entire Rest Of The World” the difference would be even more remarkable.
Heavy coffee drinkers in Norway will have coffee with breakfast, lunch, dessert and supper, plus coffee between breakfast and lunch, and between lunch and dinner. The only time they won’t be drinking coffee is while eating dinner.
They have to to make up for me not drinking any due to my dad telling me it’d mean I was an adult.
“Duhhh”…wow, that’s rude. But I don’t agree with your “of course”, and you yourself contradict it in the very same post, where you said the top of the list is “rather amazing”. That is my point. Just because someone has to be at the top of any ranking, does not mean they have to be so far above the median. Especially given that coffee is not just a beverage, but a fairly powerful drug.
Johnny, I believe that “12 cup” carafe is likely to be 48 ounces. So you are drinking maybe 19 or 20 cups by their measurement–close to or just under 80 ounces. And it sounds like you drink slightly more than that on days you commute to work. That is a seriously large amount of coffee. How do you not get major jitters? What about going to the bathroom constantly? No trouble getting to sleep at night? I guess you are a good test case for my puzzlement over how someone can consume so much coffee and still function normally.
ETA: naita, how are you defining “dinner” vs. “supper”? Here in the US, they are regional variant names for the third and last meal of the day, consumed between 5 and 8 p.m. (those who say “supper” eating more on the early end of that range IME).
It’s a long time since I lived in Sweden but I used to drink up to 20 (large) cups of coffee a day. Always had one beside me while working and several at home in the evening.
This was by no means unusual, most of my colleagues and our customers were the same.
I don’t respond to caffeine though, never get the jitters that seem to affect so many.
I don’t drink much coffee these days but do drink a couple of mugs of tea each hour, again with no more reaction than if it were water.
Johnny, a little more research finds that “12 cup” carafes actually contain somewhere around 60 to 64 ounces. :eek: So you are drinking close to a gallon of coffee per day. And that is before adding milk if you indeed do that (personally, I drink my coffee with as much milk as coffee, or even a little more, but no sugar). Wow. When did you decide that just finishing the carafe after your SO had their coffee was insufficient? You must have worked your way up to this level, right?
ETA: Myglaren, even if it were just water, a couple mugs per hour is a lot of liquid to consume in a day. And as for jitters: I just finished my quota of coffee for today; I have been drinking this amount for at least a couple years now… But I still feel pretty wired at the moment, including a kind of vibrating tense feeling in my upper front teeth. I also know from experience that I need at least 12 hours after my last sip of coffee before going to sleep, and ideally more like 14 or 15.
It’s called yerba maté and it’s a communal, shoot-the-shit, hours-long social activity. Note the top three countries: Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina. I’d guess that Paraguay tops the list because it is less economically developed than Uruguay and Argentina (who love maté just as much) and thus there is a greater percentage of the population who has time to engage in this pastime daily.
My apologies - I guess my sarcasm/rhetoric was too subtle. I’m actually agreeing with you, I think. Of course someone has to be at the top of any ranking, but it is surprising that the #1 and #2 rankings are so far above everyone else.
I’m a 3rd generation Scandanavian-American living in a cold, dark climate, and at its height my coffee habit consisted of 25-30 standard “cups” of coffee a day. Now, you have to understand that this is what I call “Norwegian coffee” (your usual Perkin’s/Denny’s strength), it’s the only thing I drank during that time, and I have a lifelong history of severe clinical depression with associated fatigue. I think it would be pretty difficult to sort out what influenced my caffeine intake, but being of Scandinavian heritage probably did have a significant impact.