ABSTRACT
On the whole, infants today are very well fed. As part of the interview, we asked the mothers to tell us everything their babies had been given to eat or drink during the previous twenty-four hours. In carrying out the pilot survey, we had found that the mothers were well able to remember the diet for the previous day quite clearly and accurately, and we therefore decided that a direct factual question about the food given to the infant on one particular sample day would yield the most reliable information on what the child had actually eaten, as opposed to what the mother liked to think of as a 'typical 'diet. There are good days and bad days in most families' diets, and by using this method it was hoped that the lavish Sunday dinners and the scratch lunches of Monday wash-day would cancel each other out.
