“After ages of dispute, coffee lovers and tea lovers have organized a debate summit to determine once and for all which beverage is the superior one” (to join this aromatic and flavorful debate, start HERE).

Although I love tea, I’m all for coffee. However, is coffee truly superior than tea?

Oh, yes,without a doubt.

Everything is about criteria. “Superior” means of higher rank, quality, or importance (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).

When it comes to popularity, coffee is the grand champion drink. I'll show you.

Rank. Checked ✅

Coffee is a growing business. Since tea was boycotted at the end of the 18th century as part of the political attack on British culture, we people in the West could get to know coffee and fall in love with it. It was an inflection point. Business people know this, so every day there are more and more coffee related businesses. And I know what you tea lovers might be thinking; British geographer David Grigg said it (here), “three cups of tea are drunk for every one of coffee.” Thus, although coffee production is higher than tea production worldwide, it doesn’t mean that there are more cups of tea being drunk as you and me are having this virtual conversation than cups of coffee. Grigg's statement turns into (I might call it the tea-vs-coffee fallacy).

The Facts:

Although more green coffee is produced globally than tea — 8.5 million metric tons versus 4.7 million metric tons of tea in 2011, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization — it takes only about two grams of tea to make a cup, compared with 10 grams of coffee. (Pew Research Center)

The reasoning:

• The first false assumption here is that all of us use the same amount of grams of coffee. This is not true. My American friend, for example, uses 10 grams of coffee for four people (four cups), whereas I use 15-18 grams of coffee for two cups.

• The second false assumption is that a single coffee drinker drinks as many cups of coffee as a tea drinker drinks cups of tea in a day. This is also not true. There are people afraid of drinking coffee because of the caffeine in it, so they drink only a small cup a day, while the benefits of tea are widely acknowledged probably causing that a single person could use not 2 grams but much more than 10 grams a day.

Some say that tea is the most popular drink after water; others say it’s coffee.

The Facts:

After petrol, coffee beans are the most traded commodity in the global market […] It is estimated that consumers drink 2.6 billion cups of coffee, every day and worldwide. The most consuming countries are in Europe[, while] the strongest increase in coffee consumption in the past few decades was observed in Japan, 30% [per capita]..
(Livelihoods Funds)

The Reasoning:

It seems to me that the number of coffee drinkers is increasing by the minute. You ask me if coffee is really more popular than tea? I'd argue that if coffee consumption weren’t conditioned by the difficulties and costs of imports/exports, if it came more easily to your doorstep, maybe, just maybe, your kitchen, my dear tea drinkers, would start smelling like coffee every morning. Just maybe.

Quality. Checked ✅

I know many people who drink their tea because it’s healthy, but they don’t prefer it to coffee in terms of taste and the boost? Pleasure? they experience while and after drinking it. I've seen this with my very eyes; coffee makes you come back. And as you may know, my tea-drinking friends, coffee is also healthy. That much I can tell.

Both tea and coffee are beneficial for our health:

In one recent study, scientists followed a half million people over a 14-year period and found that people who drank at least two cups of tea daily had a 9 to 13 percent lower risk of dying during the study period compared to non-tea drinkers. The study was carried out in the United Kingdom, where most of the tea drinkers consumed black tea. But large studies of green tea drinkers have reached similar findings […] As for coffee, a July study followed almost 172,000 people and found that those who drank 2.5 to 4.5 cups of coffee per day had a 30 percent lower likelihood of dying during the roughly seven years of the study compared to people who didn’t drink coffee.
(The Washington Post)

So what do you say, my dear tea-drinking, health-conscious friends? Adding one more healthy beverage that can also tickle your taste buds isn't bad, right? I'd love to treat you to a cup or two.

Importance. Checked ✅

Both tea and coffee are important and also popular. And that's a fact.

Coffee predominates in the Americas and in continental Europe, while tea is preferred in most of Asia and the former Soviet Union.
(Pew Research Center)

Everyday more and more coffee farmers create and help create new jobs worldwide.

In eastern Venezuela, for example I see more and more brands of locally produced coffee. There's one I love: Café Los pajaritos (Little Birds Coffee); it's a fruity, aromatic coffee (less than 8$ per kilo of coffee beans); I dare to say their excellent product has a good opportunity even in this poor market, also stained by money laundering. I don't think an excellent tea would do that. I love tea, and I drink a cup almost everyday, but coffee, my friends, I can drink coffee everyday, all day long.

If I opened my own coffee shop, I'd definitely offer a variety of quality teas on the menu. But you must know, our coffees would be the truly great part.