ABSTRACT.In July 1979 the authors obtained 24‐hour diet records from 1055 students in school‐grades 7–10 (age‐range 11–16 years) in Tasmania, Australia. For ages 12–15, our respondents appear representative of the Tasmanian population.This paper describes intakes of energy; protein, fat and carbohydrate; calcium and iron; thiamin, riboflavin and niacin‐equivalent; and vitamin A. Variations between individuals of the same age and sex were substantial; because of the skewed distributions, data are presented as percentiles, which define the extent of variation more exactly than the conventional mean and standard deviation. A majority of both sexes had intakes of energy below the recommendations of the National Health and Medical Research Council, and almost half the girls had iron intakes below these recommendations.Results of this survey appear consistent with those of smaller studies on this age‐group in other Au