asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what was the extent of the financial support given by her Department to a research project on "The structure of British meals", an account of which happened in the journal New Society of 19th December 1974; and what benefit was obtained from the project.

The project "Sociological Research into Food Used as a System of Communication" was funded from 1st October 1971 to 30th September 1973 at a total cost of £2,990. The research was commissioned as an experiment, quite different from any other studies in my Department's research programme, as part of my Department's consideration of a possible rôle for social anthropologists in the total research effort.