Mintz (1984, 1985) has also suggested that the great increase in the eating of already-prepared food inside and outside the home is having a profound effect on our lives. He notes that such forms of eating are touted as the ultimate in ‘freedom of individual choice’ but argues that in ‘eating without meals’, eating has been desocialised. As a result of this development, there is a move away from the kind of lexicon or grammar of food suggested in the work of anthropologists such as Mary Douglas, with the dissolving of the structure of the meal into a pattern of ragged and discontinous but frequent snacks, or what the food marketers have come to call ‘grazing’. In this process, Mintz suggests, the entire productive character of societies is being recast, and with it, the ‘very nature of time, of work, and of leisure’ (1985:213). Mintz is thus pessimistic about the future of food and eating, not only in terms of health, but also in terms of the social relations which are fostered by commensality. For him modern food habits appear symptomatic of alienation.