1. Adequacy and balance in expenditure on the various items of food in the diet has been compared to the standard B.M.A. (1933) diet for a child aged 8–10 in eighty out of ninety-eight families with children attending four rural schools in Sussex.

2. The proportion that these items bear to the standard declines as the income is lower and the family larger. With the exception of bread, butter and cheese there is, in fact, a marked deterioration in the diet as the family grows, particularly in the lower groups. Bread, although declining, remains above the standard, with a few isolated exceptions, in all groups, and the proportion of cheese, although only about 60% of the amount recommended in the standard diet, remains roughly constant; butter and margarine fall below the standard only in the largest families. In contrast meat, eggs, fish, and milk, are reduced to considerably less than 50% of the standard in the larger families.

3. The balance of the diet is less defective but it is, nevertheless, profoundly influenced by growth of the family, especially where the income is small. The most marked alteration is the steadily increasing proportion of bread both as the income is lower and the family larger. In the largest families in all groups bread constitutes in the neighbourhood of one-third of the total expenditure. The tendency produced by reduction of income and increase of family to lessen the proportion of first-class protein in the diet (mainly by lessening the consumption of meat, eggs, and fish) is combated to some extent by an increasing provision of cheese, a more economical protein.