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_iga [livejournal] @ 10:08 pm: > в Англии право на чаепитие также принадлежало аристократии.

Сахлинс пишет:
К середине восемнадцатого века привычка пить чай в Британии проникли во все общественные классы и стала, по словам Лорда Макартни, не просто "необходимой роскошью", как другие китайские изделия, а "необходимой жизненной необходимостью" (13:212). Если бы Англия вдруг была лишена чая, заметил секретарь миссии Макартни, сэр Джордж Стантон, это неминуемо вылилось бы в национальнальное бедствие (18 том 1:12).

Ещё:
It began with the industrialization of Victorian England. The empire was then flush with sugar from plantations in the colonies. Meantime the cities were flush with factory workers. There was no good way to feed them. And thus was born the afternoon tea break, the tea consisting primarily of warm water and sugar. If the workers were well off, they could also afford bread with heavily sugared jam-sugar-powered industrialization. There was a 500 percent increase in per capita sugar consumption in Britain between 1860 and 1890, around the time when the life expectancy of a male factory worker was seventeen years. By the end of the century the average Brit was getting about one sixth of his total nutrition from sugar, exactly the same percentage Americans get today-double what nutritionists recommend.