British cuppa under threat as warm and wet becomes herbal and green

The traditional British solution to a crisis - putting on the kettle for a nice cup of tea - is the latest victim of the nation's changing habits, according to market research.

The cup of char is returning to one of its homelands, India, in the latest global statistics on consumption of something warm and wet.

Drinkers in Delhi are now just a fraction in consumption terms behind the modern Brit, who is increasingly likely to sort things out over a cup of something herbal and green.

"The biggest winners in the British market place these last five years have been fruit and herbal teas," says the report from Datamonitor, an independent firm of market analysts.

"Consumption of them has risen by more than a third, while green tea sales in 2002 were more than 20 times higher than in 1997."

The herbal brews, seen and marketed as healthy alternatives, have replaced coffee as tea's greatest British rival, possibly because of the bad name given to caffeine, which tea and coffee contain.

"Fruit and herbal brews have been very skilfully marketed," says Datamonitor. "They were once looked down on as a drink for new age puritans, but they've gradually acquired mainstream credibility as a healthier alternative to tea or coffee."

Britain's love affair with plain, ordinary tea is longstanding and resilient, however, and has survived previous fads for other hot drinks. Charles II made the drink fashionable in the 1660s, although the connection between the country and the drink was really sealed by the American rebels who turned Boston harbour into a vast, cold teapot in 1773.

Iced tea was also an American invention - by merchant Richard Blechyndon at the 1904 St Louis world fair - but it failed to dislodge the traditional version in Britain, after a brief craze. Datamonitor notes a revival: in spite of last year's miserable summer, pre-packaged iced tea sales in the UK were up 5% to 14 million litres or 42 million cans.

India's increasing consumption of tea coincides with the takeover of Tetley's tea by Tata in 2000. Indians drink just under 2.2kg annually compared with just over 2.2kg in Britain. The top tea nation is paradoxically Turkey, home of some of the world's most famous coffees, at 2.3kg per person.

Datamonitor also measured national coffee consumption and found that Danes top the list. Norway, Finland and Sweden come next, followed by Brazil and only then the United States.

"The high price of alcohol in Scandinavia almost certainly plays a part," says Datamonitor. "A bottle of beer in Denmark costs 10 times as much as an espresso. In those circumstances, caffeine can be a far more cost-effective way of getting wired than drinking."