Mushroom

Mushroom (pronounced muhsh-room)

(1) Any of various fleshy fungi including the toadstools, puffballs, coral fungi, morels etc; any of several edible species, especially of the family Agaricaceae, as Agaricus campestris meadow mushroom, or field mushroom, cultivated for food in many places.

(2) A fungus producing such fruiting bodies.

(3) Anything of similar shape or correspondingly rapid growth.

(4) As ellipsis of “mushroom cloud”, a large, mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke or rubble, formed in the atmosphere as a result of an explosion (or other sudden release of energy), especially a nuclear explosion.

(5) Of, consisting of, or containing mushrooms.

(6) Resembling a mushroom in shape or form; to have or assume the shape of a mushroom.

(7) Of rapid growth and often brief duration (to spread, grow, or develop quickly).

(8) To gather mushrooms (typically as “mushrooming”, practiced by a mushroomer).

(9) As “magic mushroom” (used typically in the plural), any mushroomlike fungus that after ingestion induces psychedelic effects (“shrooms” to users, “psilocybin mushroom” to clinicians in some jurisdictions where prescription is now lawful).

(10) In ballistics (of a bullet), to form the shape of a mushroom when striking a soft target.

(11) In bar billiards, any of the mushroom-shaped pegs.

(12) In architecture, a concrete column with a thickened portion at the top, used to support a slab.

(13) In slang, an individual who rises rapidly from obscurity or poverty (now rare and displaced by “upstart”); the figurative sense of something that grows very quickly or seems to appear suddenly remains in use.

1350–1400: Following the usual conventions in English, it may be expected the construct was mush- + -room but those words wholly are unrelated and the ultimate source is unknown.  Mushroom was an alteration (by folk etymology) of the Middle English muscheron & musseroun, from the eleventh century Middle French mousseron, from the Anglo-Norman musherum & moscheron, from the Old French moisseron, from the Late Latin mussiriōn- (stem of mussiriō).  The Old French word had a murky history and etymologists suspect it was from the Old French mosse & moise (moss (from which modern French gained mousse (on the basis of the first known use being of a type of fungus which grows in moss))), from the Frankish mosu (moss) or the Old Dutch mosa (moss).  The Old French was akin to the Old High German mosa (moor, swamp), the Old High German mos (moss, bog) & mios (moss, mire), the Old English mēos (moss) & mōs (bog, marsh), the Old Norse mosi (moss) & myrr (bog, mire), all from the Proto-Germanic musą, muso & miuziz (mosses, bog), from the primitive Indo- European mews- (mosses, mold, mildew).  It displaced the native Old English swamm.  The clipping shroom is a synonym (most popular with users of magic mushrooms) and the spelling mushrump is long obsolete (the modern spelling more or less standardized by the 1560s).  Mushroom is a noun, adjective & verb, mushroomed is a verb, mushrooming is a noun & verb, mushroomer is a noun, mushroomic, mushroomless, mushroomlike, mushroomoid & mushroomy are adjectives; the noun plural is mushrooms.

Lindsay Lohan's mushroom gravy.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil or butter
3 cups thinly sliced baby portabella mushrooms or white button mushrooms
½ cup finely chopped onion
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour or cup for cup gluten-free flour
3 cups beef broth/stock or vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

(1) In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat.  Sautee mushrooms and onions until they are nicely browned (should take around 7 minutes).  Add in garlic and stir until fragrant (about 30 seconds).

(2) Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.  Whisk in the broth, remembering to scrape from the bottom of pan all the "browned bits" (the best part).  Reduce to a simmer and simmer until thickened, then remove from heat.  Taste for salt and pepper and season to taste.

The alternative etymology (noting the Ancient Greek μύκης (múkēs) (mushroom) suggests the Old French may be of pre-Roman origin and it remains a matter of debate among etymologists (almost all lexicographers stick to “of uncertain origin”).  What is agreed is the noun “mushroom” was at first applied to almost any of the larger fungi but later to the agaricoid fungi (especially the edible varieties).  The figurative use for something or someone that makes a sudden appearance in full form dates from the 1590s; it was applied especially an upstart person (bounder) or family (those who rose rapidly from a low station in life).  All that was based on the mushroom’s impressively rapid rate of growth and by the 1740s the figurative use substantially has lost the “upstart” sense and came to be used generally of “expanding or increasing rapidly; to rise suddenly in position or rank”.  The famous (or infamous) “mushroom cloud” was first widely described in 1916 (World War I (1914-1918) a time & place of big explosions witnessed by many with cameras) but the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) cites the first use as dating from US in 1902.  It thus long pre-dates the nuclear-age but the phenomenon would for millennia (long before there were explosives) have been observed by those watching volcanic eruptions.  After photographs of the immediate aftermath of the A-bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki (August 1945) widely were publicized, the term became popular and spread to many aspects of popular culture including film, art and T-shirts.

Germania, Berlin’s sandy soil and the “mushroom” used to test for sinkage

Germania model, circa 1940.  The scale of the buildings was monumental and Speer was aware of the comparisons with the Rome and Athens of Antiquity, even writing (a not wholly original) “Theory of Ruin Value” arguing the importance of designs that might, thousands of years hence, leave “magnificent ruins”.

Until in the twenty-first century the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) began doing things at a scale once thought unsustainable, the urban-redevelopment plan imagined on a grandest scale was that for Berlin designed by Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945).  What was the be the capital of the Third Reich (and, in the minds of the most delusional of the Nazis: “of the world”) would be renamed Germania and, as Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) told Speer’s wife: “Your husband is going to build buildings for me the likes of which haven't been built for 4,000 years.”  Prone to lies and exaggeration, this was one of the occasions the Führer was being truthful and although there was little the plans for Germania that was original, what was impressive was the scale, Speer taking reference points from architectural history (the Pantheon in Rome, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris) and making the German versions bigger.  Although at the time much taken with what he called the regime’s “Empire style”, in his (sometimes reliable) post-war memoirs (Erinnerungen (Memories or Reminiscences) and published in English as Inside the Third Reich (1969)) he admitted the stylistic failure, above all because the architecture wholly was disconnected from the human scale.

The mushroom, Speer's improbable architectural legacy.

Of all that Speer planned for Hitler's megalomaniacal vision of Germania, only small fragments remain but the strangest and largest relic is the Schwerbelastungskörper (heavy load-bearing body) a concrete structure 30 metres (100 feet) tall and weighing 12,650 tons (11,476 tonnes); locals nicknamed it der Pilz (the mushroom).  Located on the city’s southern edge (near modern day Südkreuz station), the giant concrete cylinder was in 1941 erected to test the suitability of Berlin’s sandy soil, something of great significance because most of Germania’s large, representational buildings would be constructed from granite, concrete & steel; although structural engineers could solve the challenges the architects designs presented, the only way to be certain the soil could handle such weight was to conduct a practical, real-time, full-size experiment.  While the data were required for much of what was planned, of particular interest was intended landmark of the Victory Arch which, at 117 metres (384 feet) tall and 170 metres (558 feet) wide would obviously exert much pressure and, having the foundations sinking into the sandy soil was less than ideal.  With a footprint of exactly 100 m³, Speer’s giant, reinforced concrete “mushroom” was placed in a way that would as closely as possible emulate the forces involved; it sat 18 metres (60 feet) deep with the above-ground extending 14 metres (46 feet) high while inside there were a number of measuring devices recording movement.  As things transpired the instruments recorded sinking between 110-180 mm (4.3-7.1 inches) across the six measuring points and that was well beyond the 60 mm (2.4 inches) deemed by Speer as the upper limit of acceptability.  Whether the findings would have compelled a change to the arch or indeed any of Germania’s other gargantuan designs will never be known because, as the tide of war turned, the resources devoted to the project were re-allocated to more urgent tasks and by 1943 Speer, by then also minister of armaments and war production, quietly shut-down the Germania planning office.  So little was built and less survived but the “mushroom” remained and is now a tourist attraction and a site visited by many organized tours.

The mushroom cloud

Tsar Bomba, the largest ever nuclear test, detonated by the Soviet Union in October 1961.

As the photographs suggest, the mushroom clouds generated by large volcanic eruptions and the detonation of nuclear weapons can look similar because the same atmospheric physics are operating despite the underlying energy-release mechanisms being completely different and, counterintuitively, there is no precise TNT (abbreviation of trinitrotoluene (an explosive substance used in blasting)) equivalent threshold above which every explosion produces a mushroom cloud. A mushroom cloud is principally a consequence of buoyancy and atmospheric fluid dynamics, rather than merely a product of energy released, thus the phenomenon can occur with nuclear explosions, large conventional explosions, volcanic eruptions and even especially intense fires.  What an explosion does is produce a very hot, rapidly expanding mass of gas and entrained material and this rises because the air above has less resistance than the ground below; it rises because it has acquired enormous upward momentum and, as it rises, it entrains surrounding air.  The most important mechanism in the ultimate generation of a mushroom cloud’s distinctive shape is a phenomenon plasma physicists call “thermal buoyancy”.

Physics of a mushroom cloud (left), the fluid dynamics an interplay of energy, matter & air temperature and a mushroom cloud T-shirt (right), the images used sometimes for political messaging and sometimes just for dramatic effect. 

Fernando Famiani's photograph of the eruption of Mt Etna, Sicily, Italy, December 2015, shot from the outskirts of the village of San Teodora.

Familiar from many conditions in climate science, as hot material rises, the heated gas being less dense than the surrounding atmosphere, the rising plume entrains cooler air, increasing its volume while reducing its average temperature, a process that continues until its density approaches that of the surrounding atmosphere at which point, the rising material spreads laterally, producing the mushroom cloud’s characteristic “cap”, the outer regions circulating downwards, maintain the shape of the stem.  There are scaling relationships between explosion energy and the size, height and evolution of the resulting plume and consequently, as a general principle, as explosions become larger, a mushroom cloud becomes increasingly likely under appropriate atmospheric conditions.  So the mushroom cloud is a product of the environment; the same release of energy in different conditions (an explosion deep underground; a large underwater explosion; an explosion in a confined structure; energy released over a sufficiently long period rather than instantaneously) will tend not to create one whereas a relatively modest release of energy can produce one if the geometry and atmospheric conditions are favourable.  So, a mushroom cloud is a thing not of yield but of atmospheric conditions.

Death cap mushrooms.

In 2023, Australian mother of two Erin Patterson (b 1974) murdered three of her relatives and nearly killed a fourth by preparing for them a lunch of Beef Wellingtons laced with highly toxic death cap mushrooms.  Amanita phalloides (the more evocative “death cap” the common name) is a basidiomycete fungus and mushroom (one of many in the genus Amanita) and although originally from Europe, it has spread around the planet as have many species (zoological & botanical) in the age of mass-movement of people and goods.  Dangerously, the death cap closely resembles a number of (variously bland and delicious) edible mushrooms used in many dishes so mushroomers must take care when mushrooming (harvesting wild mushrooms).  They’re the most poisonous of all known mushrooms and a single example contains enough toxin to kill an adult human; unsurprisingly, death caps are estimated to be responsible for as many as 90% of the annual death-toll from eating toxic mushrooms.  Quite what is the extent of the annual loss of life is uncertain because in rural parts of Asia (where foraged mushrooms are common in diets) the statistics are not reliable but it’s believed the numbers bounce-around between 100-300.  The principal toxic constituent (hardly affected by cooking or freezing) is α-Amanitin which causes liver and kidney failure.

Erin Patterson, prior to charges being laid.

It was severe liver failure that was the cause of the death of Erin Patterson’s three victims, all of whom died within a week of falling ill (despite one receiving a liver transplant); the sole survivor recovered after several weeks of treatment.  The trial was conducted before a jury that delivered a guilty verdict on all three charges and the judge handed down a sentence of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 33 years; there was immense international interest in the case and it was the first sentencing hearing in the state of Victoria to be live-streamed.  In what was anyway a macabre tale, one interesting aspect was the way Erin Patterson chose to learn about the nature of the death cap; some will have drawn the conclusion: “When researching murder-methods, don’t use one’s own digital devices.”  The case currently is on appeal, the defense seeking a retrial on several procedural and technical grounds while the state is arguing the sentence was “manifestly inadequate” and there should be no possibility of parole.  On X (formerly known as Twitter), some were even more unforgiving, suggesting: “She should get the chair.”

Cryptic crochet: Erin Patterson crocheted a rat as a gift for her defense counsel.  According to press reports, it was an expression of “thanks” but a crocheted mushroom would have been a nice touch.

In her cell, “mushroom lady” (the public's choice of dub upon the case being publicized) is said to pass the hours crocheting, an intricate, time-consuming business but for those serving long prison sentences, time is relative in a way different to that made famous by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and for the seven Nazis incarcerated in Spandau prison after the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946), “time” often came up in their sometimes awkward conversations.  Grand Admiral Erich Raeder (1876–1960; head of the German Navy 1928-1943) served as prison librarian and, responding to a complaint from one of his fellow inmates that his handing out the four permitted (and by 1954 uncensored) newspapers (one selected by each of the powers administering the prison (France (Kurier), the UK (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), US (Die Welt) & USSR (Berliner Zeitung)) bound in one folder meant “It will take too long for one person to read all four newspapers”, answered “That doesn't matter. You've got plenty of time, after all.”  Despite that uncompromising start, within two days the admiral relented, averting the threat of mutiny by distributing the papers singularly.

According to Australian neuroscientist Dr Sarah McKay, knitting and crochet can be “deceptively good” for the brain, being an “ideal mix of repetition plus cognitive challenge”, helping individuals regulate their mood and attention span.  She explained the mechanism by pointing out in crocheting: “You have to remember where you're up to, you have to problem solve, you have to make decisions, you're constantly challenging yourself if you're doing more and more complicated patterns but, at the same time, it's challenging but it's low stakes… which I think might be one of the best kinds [of cognitive challenge] we can have.  We're mastering a skill, we're getting better at that and we're kind of just doing the task for the sake of doing the task … it's quite a simple form of mastery and there's something really soothing and good for our mood about that.”  Intriguingly, Dr McKay now has one potential subject available for what would be a unique, longitudinal study: mushroom lady sitting for 33 years in solitary confinement, crocheting stuff.  Such parameters would of course never be approved by any university ethics committee so for researchers interested how such things affect a brain operating in a most unusual environment, there are possibilities. 

Ozempic: The famous “fat jab”.  Now on GLP-1 fat jabs, hopefully the prison authorities will permit mushroom lady (once slender) to create content and open an OnlyFans page with proceeds going to the families of her victims.  There would be a viewership for such content, some of whom would seek contact.

One unexpected coda to the trial was the announcement mushroom lady has been granted access to taxpayer-funded Ozempic (a GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) appetite suppressant), the official explanation being her inability to pursue an exercise regime while in solitary confinement; because of the nature of her offences, it's expected she'll remain in solitary confinement for the foreseeable future (33 years presumably within the vista of “foreseeable”).  Unfortunately, her previous exercise techniques were not disclosed, something that would have been of interest to many pursuing weight-loss.  Doubtlessly anticipating some public outrage at the thought taxpayers would be footing the bill for mushroom lady to get free “fat jabs”, a spokesperson for Victoria’s Department of Justice issued a statement confirming weight loss drugs were just another medicine and would be provided to prisoners based on a clinician's advice: “Prescriptions are only given by clinicians when there’s a clear medical need - like preventing serious conditions such as type 2 diabetes.  Access to prescribed weight loss medication was introduced in response to recommendations from the Coroner following a death in custody linked to obesity.”  The convicted mass-murderer had told the court she “had a problem” with body image and binge-eating, a perhaps unnecessary confirmation given some of the photographs circulated by the media.

Thinspo

Thinspo (pronounced thin-spoh)

(1) Material created, curated or used (distributed almost exclusively in digital form) to inspire thinness or weight loss.

(2) A sub-set of the pro-ana community which exists to support those on a spectrum ranging from obsessive dieters to those who have chosen as a lifestyle a managed form of anorexia nervosa.

2005–2010: The short form of thinspiration, the construct being thin +‎ (in)spiration.  Thin was from the Middle English thinne, thünne & thenne, from the Old English þynne, from the Proto-West Germanic þunnī, from the Proto-Germanic þunnuz (thin) (and related to þanjaną (to stretch, spread out)), from the primitive Indo-European ténhus (thin), from ten- (to stretch).  It was cognate with the German dünn, the Dutch dun, the West Frisian tin, the Icelandic þunnur, the Danish tynd, the Swedish tunn, the Latin tenuis, the Irish tanaí, the Welsh tenau, the Latvian tievs, the Sanskrit तनु (tanú) (thin) and the Persian تنگ‎ (tang) (narrow). A doublet of tenuis, it was related also to tenuous.  Inspiration was from the Middle English inspiracioun, from the Old French inspiration, from the Late Latin īnspīrātiōnem (nominative īnspīrātiō), from the Classical Latin īnspīrātus (past participle of inspīrō).  It displaced the native Old English onbryrdnes (literally “in-pricked-ness”).  Thinspo inspired others forms such as fitspo (encouraging fitness) and blondespo (advocating being blonde) and between thinspo and fitspo, critics noted some overlap, suspecting that in at least some cases the later identity is assumed as an attempt at disguise.  Thinspo & thinspiration are nouns; the noun plural is thinspos.  Derived forms like the nouns thinspirationist & thinspirationism do appear but are non-standard.

Thinspo's idealized bone definition.

The companion term ribspro (the short form of ribspiration (known also as bonespo)) is a particular genre within thinspo.  Whereas thinspo material can be long or short-form text, diagrams or images, ribspro is almost exclusively visual, the text limited to perhaps a few admiring or encouraging words and, as the names suggest, the focus is on ribcages or other bones proximately defined against taut skin.  Backbones, ribs, clavicles and hipbones seem the most favored, presumably because they tend to provide the most definitional contrast but there’s also the suspicion they're the particular aesthetic construct the thinspo community finds most attractive (unlike a knee or elbow which, however boney, seems not to be thought photogenic).  Another genre (a kind of applied thinspo) within the community is meanspo (the short form of mean inspiration), from the “tough love” or “cruel to be kind” tradition of weight loss and this school of thought advocates issuing critical and insulting comments to those considered “insufficiently thin enough”, the rationale being this will convince them to reduce intake, exercise more, purge and thus lose weight.  The thinspo ecosystem has also proliferated thematic variations such as “vegan thinspo” although that seems at least to some extent opportunistic given the most extreme of the thinspo operatives had long since banished animal products, regarding recommendations like “lean meat” or “chicken strips” as just so much fat.

Thinspo images often are rendered in grayscale, and that may have stated in in a nod to the aesthetic of art-house photography or simply because in monochrome the bone definition is more pronounced, a function of the contrast of light & shadow exploited by artists working with the chiaroscuro technique.  Whatever the origin, "black & white" became a thinspo motif although the B&A (before & after) posters appear to stick to original, full-color images. 

Like much in the pro-ana community, thinspo sites exist on a spectrum, those thought innocuous left to continue while any judged to be encouraging eating disorders subject to being shutdown although the efforts undertaken by (and sometimes imposed on) the platforms is a Sisyphean struggle, content shifting between hosts as required.  It’s also organic in that thinspo, like all that’s curated by the pro-ana community, is just another function of the supply & demand curve.  The supply of pro-ana content exists because of demand and in a manner familiar to behavioral economists, the ecosystem is symbiotic, the two forces acting upon and encouraging the growth of the other.  Like much that is on-line, some of the material blatantly is fake, something most obviously detected in the dubious B&A photos which appear with frequent duplication.  

Whether there were statistically significant differences in the nature of the content of thinspo and fitspo (a clipping of fitspiration (the construct being fit + (in)spiration) sites (featuring images and other material designed to trigger a motivation to exercise and enhance physical fitness) attracted academic interest and there were studies, the results differing in detail (there were widely divergent results depending on the platform analyzed which was thought to be a reflection more of the degree of success a platform achieved in enforcing its policies than any difference in the collective user profile) but displaying the same general trends: Thinspo sites portrayed body parts with more than twice the frequency of fitspo and posts highlighting bony body features and references to mental illness were overwhelmingly almost specific to thinspo.  Interestingly, the differences between fitspo & thinspo relating to sexually suggestive images, appearance comparison and messages encouraging restrictive eating were striking and almost wholly correlated with the platform on which they were posted.  The more extreme of the forks such as self harm (such as the cutter subset) also appear on thinspo sites.

Thinspo Rules

Thinspirationism: A blonde Lindsay Lohan during thinspo pin-up phase, 2005.

(1) Never eat something just because you want to finish it.  Eat only enough to stop the worst of the hunger pangs and don’t eat until sated; those extra bites add up.

(2) Don’t let emotions take over and eat only if hungry.  Stop yourself once you start eating if you know it’s for the wrong reasons.  The right reason is pangs of hunger; there is no other reason.

(3) If you catch yourself in a binge, stop the moment you realize.  Don’t forgive yourself for screwing up; it will only permit you to screw up again.  If you have binged, it must in some way be atoned for and than can be an increased energy burn (ie more exercise) or intake deprivation (eg skipping next meal).

(4) Every calorie counts so review every recipe and remove as many calories as possible.  Where available, choose the low cal version (but study nutritional-content labels because tags like "diet" or "97% fat-free" can be deceptive and misleading) and drink water (unmodified soda water is fine), black tea or black coffee instead of other beverages.  Avoid zero-cal sweeteners because (1) they’re a chemical cocktail and (2) the thinspo goal is completely to cure the body’s natural sugar addiction.  Artificial sweeteners may be equated with opioid substitutes such as methadone and while clinically there may be good reasons for a patient seeking to cease using heroin to be proscribed methadone, sugar is like nicotine: highly addictive but weak and able (chemically) to be withdrawn from within days.  Some will find the psychological addiction lingers longer but often that's associative (as it is with the social link between drinking alcohol and smoking).  The general principle is it's not good to replace one addiction with another so with added sugar the answer is "cold turkey", not packets of powdered chemicals.  The body does of course need sugar (it works essentially by converting intake into sugars the muscles, brain and other organs can use) but your intake should be exclusively in natural (unprocessed) sugars like those in green apples.    

(5) Don’t feel guilt about wasting food.  The undesirability on environmental grounds is noted but the sooner you change yourself, the better and as you hone your techniques, losses can be reduced to close to zero.  Set a goal always not to eat everything you’re served and gradually increase this quantity.  Before long, you’ll be throwing away food without barely a thought and if you have a garden or outdoor pot-plants, most organic waste can be chopped up or mushed to be mixed with water and added to the soil (plants will use the nutrients and eventually, the residue become soil).

(6) Eat slowly, savoring each bite.  Thinspo does not mean ceasing to enjoy food; it means the opposite because it makes every bite a rare and valued treat.  Thinspo life is like a rugby test in which only one try is scored but it is celebrated whereas "normal" life is like a rugby sevens game in which there may be two-dozen trys: after the first few they cease to be exceptional.  We evolved quickly (in biological terms) from creatures which had to hunt or gather every bite of the fat, salt & sugar we craved to survive but, with the same biology, we now live often sedentary lives among shelves laden with fat, salt & sugar, all within reach and sometimes packaged conveniently for instant consumption.  It is the curse of plenty. 

(7) Drink water during meals, as much as you can manage but, as a general principle, don't go beyond 6 litres (1.3 gallons (UK) 1.6 (US)); this is well short of of water's toxicity threshold but there's both a law of diminishing returns and a point at which water-intake becomes counter-productive.  Water curbs hunger, is filling, aids in digestion and maintains hydration which has many benefits.  Water has zero calories and can be taken as ice.

(8) Chew food more, taking at least one full breath after every bite.  While it will vary according to what’s being eaten, as a guide, chew 20-30 times for each mouthful. This not only assists digestion but slows the pace of eating, reducing consumption.

(9) Cut food into smaller pieces which (1) slows the process of eating, (2) can make you think you’re eating more (there's nothing wrong with fooling yourself if self-aware) and (3) it will make other people think you ate more (in some circumstances it can be helpful to fool others).

Thinspirationist: Actor Lily Collins (b 1989) in a semi-sheer white Calvin Klein ensemble, the cropped spaghetti-strap top and knee-length pencil skirt, both embellished with scale sequins, New York Fashion Week, New York City, September, 2025.  Note the pleasing definition of the sinews (arrowed, centre).  The hair-style is a chin-length bob.

(10) Associate unhealthy food with something else: ice cream with saturated fat, bread with carbs, juice with sugar etc.  Concrete visual examples are also helpful: imagine cake as fat sitting in and adding bulk to your thighs, chips as a permanent lining adding mass to the stomach etc.

(11) Learn from other people eating because while there are individual variations, overall, the patterns should be consistent.  Watch skinny people and apply their principles to your own diet; watch fat people with disgust and revulsion, avoiding what they do.

(12) Decide beforehand how much you are going to eat and never eat more.  If cooking, cook only one serving, so you can’t eat anymore.  The ideal model is to have no food in the house and each day buy only what you’re that day allowed.  It can at first be difficult but can be done and if stuck to, it’s a foolproof diet because you cannot eat what's not there.  If on the day you've not been able to buy food, you must fast and take in only water or black tea and coffee.  You won't enjoy it but it's good for you and may inspire you to add one or two "fast days" to the weekly cycle.

Lindsay Lohan shopping on Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, 2009.  Her thinspo pin-up career long out-lasted her blonde phase.

(13) Always remind yourself of your goals and rewards.  Keep track of daily nutrient and food goals (some use a diet minder journal or tracking app but the best method is whatever works for you).  Weigh yourself twice a day (before morning coffee and just before going to bed), the goal being always to see a lower number than previous weigh-in.  If you have achieved a target weight and operate within a daily variation of +/- 100g, that is acceptable although that's also technologically deterministic: if your digital scales report in 50g increments, reduce your acceptable variability to that level for if God has given us such scales, She's trying to tell us something.

(14) Don’t eat 2½ hours before bed.  This time window can be increased but not reduced.

(15) You’ll be sometimes compelled to eat with friends or family so develop techniques surreptitiously to dispose of food.  You’ll get good at knowing where to sit so one hand can always be unseen and a good trick is to wear clothes with big pockets you can line with plastic bags.  Sit somewhere which makes disposal simple (open windows ideal, large pot plants can work) and develop a suite of reasons to ask to sit in certain spots.

(16) Don't be tempted to take up smoking or vaping.  While it can't be denied smoking often works as an appetite suppressant (all those commendably slender catwalk models can't be wrong), inhaling a known carcinogen is unwise because not only does it shorten lifespan (it seems on average by about a decade although the numbers do bounce around) but even while one remains alive it can induce or worsen many illnesses and other conditions.  While in the long run we're all dead and one should die thin, the object is to live thin for as long as life remains enchanting and what smoking does is tend to reduce life expectancy.  The numbers need to be understood because while dying at 75 rather that 85 may not (vied from decades afar) sound that bad, smoking directly can kill those in their twenties or thirties.  There are better ways (see 1-15 above) to lose weight and the evidence on vaping is mixed.  It's too soon to tell what the long-term health outcomes will be but there is anecdotal evidence flavored vapes can stimulate one's appetite and that makes sense because so many use tastes the mind associates with "sweet".  There's only one acceptable form of addiction: diet & exercise.     

Peptonize

Peptonize (pronounced pep-tuh-nahyz)

(1) In physiology and biochemistry, to hydrolyse (a protein) to peptones by a proteolytic enzyme, especially by pepsin or pancreatic extract (done usually to aid digestion).

(2) In biochemistry, any water-soluble mixture of polypeptides and amino acids formed by the partial hydrolysis of protein.

(3) To render a text or some other form into something more easily understood (ie a figurative use of the notion of “making more digestible”).

1877: The construct was peptone + ize.  The noun peptone was from the German Pepton, from the Ancient Greek πεπτόν (peptón) (cooked, digested), (neuter of peptos), the verbal adjective of peptein (to cook), from πέπτω (péptō) (soften, ripen, boil, cook, bake, digest); the ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European root pekw (to cook; to ripen).  The –ize suffix was from the Middle English -isen, from the Middle French -iser, from the Medieval Latin -izō, from the Ancient Greek -ίζω (-ízō), from the primitive Indo-European verbal suffix -idyé-.  It was cognate with other verbal suffixes including the Gothic -itjan, the Old High German –izzen and the Old English -ettan (verbal suffix).  It was used to form verbs from nouns or adjectives which (1) make what is denoted by the noun or adjective & (2) do what is denoted by the noun or adjective; the alternative form is –ise.  In British English, alternative spelling is peptonise.  Peptonize, peptonized & peptonizing are verbs, peptonic is an adjective and peptonization & peptonizer are nouns; the most common noun plural is peptonizations.

Peptone was adopted as the general name for a substance into which the nitrogenous elements of food are converted by digestion.  The word entered scientific English in 1860, the German Pepton having first appeared in academic papers in 1849.  Being used in chemistry, a number of derived forms were created as required including antipeptone (a product of gastric and pancreatic digestion, differing from hemipeptone in not being decomposed by the continued action of pancreatic juice), hemipeptone (a product of gastric and pancreatic digestion of albuminous matter, which (unlike antipeptone) is convertible into leucin and tyrosin by the continued action of pancreatic juice; it's formed also from hemialbumose and albumin by boiling dilute sulphuric acid), bactopeptone (a peptone used as a bacterial culture medium) and neopeptone (a commercial mixture of peptones & vitamins), amphopeptone (a product of gastric digestion, a mixture of hemipeptone and antipeptone

Peptides attracted interest some years ago when their use in the performance enhancing drugs (PED) supplied to athletes was publicized.  Peptones and peptides are both derived from proteins but have distinct differences in their structures and properties.  Peptides are short chains of amino acids linked together by peptide bonds and are naturally occurring molecules found in the body and in some foods (hence the interest in their use in PEDs), their biological functions including acting as signaling molecules, hormones, and enzymes.  Under laboratory conditions or during industrial process they can also be derived from the hydrolysis of proteins to be used as therapeutic agents, diagnostic tools, and in many research environments.  Examples of peptides include oxytocin, vasopressin, and insulin.  Peptones are mixtures of amino acids and peptides produced by the partial hydrolysis of proteins and are significantly larger and more complex than peptides.  In the body, they’re produced by the digestion of natural proteins using enzymes or acids and in microbiological culture media are widely used as a source of amino acids and peptides which readily can be utilized by microorganisms for growth and metabolism.  In the industrial production of food, peptones are a common flavor enhancer and examples include tryptone, casitone, and yeast extract.

Mother's other little helper: Peptonized port was once recommended for nursing mothers.

The reason the verb peptonize (and peptonise) is at all known beyond biochemistry & industrial laboratories is the form can by analogy be used to describe the process by which some long or unintelligible document is rendered into something more easily digestible.  In this it differs from “abridge” which describes reducing the size of a document and, strictly speaking, the process should be restricted to removing passages of text which are not essential to the meaning or which intrude on the narrative flow.  Abridgment of novels (of which those published by the Reader’s Digest periodical remain the best-known) have become a popular form and often appear in editions including several of an author’s works.  The Reader's Digest began publication of these anthologies (fiction & nonfiction) in 1950 and originally they marketed by advertisements in the periodical and in mail-order catalogues (which were for 150-odd years a form of distribution which can be considered the B2C (business to consumer) websites of the pre-internet age as “Reader's Digest Condensed Books” before in 1997 being re-branded as “Reader's Digest Select Editions”.  There were some who were rather snobby about the Reader's Digest because it avoided abstractions and wrote for a literate but not necessarily highly educated audience and the news in the 1980s that it was Ronald Reagan’s (1911-2004, US president 1981-1989) preferred periodical reinforced the prejudice although it appears also to have boosted circulation.  More sympathetic critics however have praised the editing of the company’s abridged editions which they in more than one case observed made for a better novel.

Among the more infamous suggested abridgments was that recommended by some critics for Joseph Heller’s (1923-1999) dark satire Catch-22 (1961).  Apparently not enjoying the mental gymnastics demanded by the structure, not only did they suggest one or more chapters should be deleted, the consensus appeared it be it would matter little which chapters were sacrificed in the desired abridgment.  Time has been kinder to the book and few would now suggest deleting anything although the author, like many novelists, discarded much from his early drafts and in 2003 release Catch as Catch Can which included two chapters which never made it to the final draft (the previously published Love, Dad & Yossarian Survives), both of which worked well as short stories which were more viciously condemnatory of the US military than even what appeared in 1961.  Six decades on, it’s difficult to make the case removing a chapter from Catch-22 would in anyway peptonize to work although in at least one literary studies course students were set the task of working out which chapter could be deleted with the fewest consequential changes needing to be imposed on the rest. 

In 1970 however, it became possible to assess what would happen if chunks of the book were deleted because that year a film “version” was released and to produce that, radically the novel was abridged.  Whether it was much peptonized by the process was at least questionable, the phrase in the review by Richard Schickel (1933–2017): “One of our novels is missing” capturing the view of many.  In fairness, given the sprawling scale, there was of course no other way it could be condensed into two hours of screen time and something spread over many viewings, a la Richard Wagner’s (1813–1883) Ring Cycle (1876), would have brought its own problems.  Still, by 2019 technology had made the habits of audiences change and a six-part mini-series was released.  With a total running time over four hours it was still not enough to encompass the whole novel but hardly of a length to intimidate the binge generation and as a piece of entertainment it was well received although the advice of the serious-minded remained the same: read the book.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

Both the film and the book actually went well beyond mere abridgment, verging solidly into what students of the visual forms call “interpretation” or “adaptation” so people can decide whether there was peptonization, simplification or both.  By contrast, a document subjected to a peptonization may be rendered shorter, longer or even transformed into a different format.  The genre known as “popular” (“popular science” and “popular history” the best known) often contain elements from technical or academic works which are re-written into a form more easily comprehended by readers without background in the specialization and is a classic form of peptonization.  Once can also exist as an adjunct document which accompanies the substantive text: an explanatory memorandum and an executive summary are both examples and even the abstract which sits as a header can fulfil the function and all three probably are valued by many because they obviate any need to read something which may be tiresomely and often needlessly long.  That may have been what Lord Salisbury (1893-1972) had in mind when in 1952 he remarked of the idea “…budget proposals could be simplified and summarized a little before being shown to the prime-minister.”: “Of course, I don’t know how far they are peptonized already.”  Even then, such use was rare (certainly outside the House of Lords) and now the meaning functionally be extinct.

Approved by His Majesty's Home Secretary.

In England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, peptonised milk was part of the treatment regimes used in the force-feeding of patients in lunatic asylums, suffragettes on hunger strike those afflicted by Anorexia Nervosa (then still often called Anorexia Hysterica).  The method didn’t long endure in dealing with the bolshie proto-feminists because the public reaction was such the Home Office usually relented.  It remained often used for the anorexics and it presumably enjoyed some success but in 1895 The Lancet (a weekly medical journal first published in 1823) reported a fatal case: “The patient refused food so ‘was fed an enemata of peptonised milk, beef tea and brandy.  This was carried out for two to three days and in ten days she could take a moderate diet by the mouth, but suffered from diarrhoea.  On the thirteenth day after admission she rapidly became worse, the temperature rose to 102°F, and on the fifteenth day she died.”

Anorexia

Anorexia (pronounced an-uh-rek-see-uh)

(1) In clinical medicine, loss of appetite and inability to eat.

(2) In psychiatry, as anorexia nervosa, a defined eating disorder characterized by fear of becoming fat and refusal of food, leading to debility and even death.

(3) A widely-used (though clinically incorrect) short name for anorexia nervosa.

1590–1600: From the New Latin, from the Ancient Greek ἀνορεξία (anorexía), the construct being ἀν (an) (without) + ὄρεξις (órexis) (appetite; desire).  In both the Greek and Latin, it translated literally as "a nervous loss of appetite".  Órexis (appetite, desire) is from oregein (to desire, stretch out) and was cognate with the Latin regere (to keep straight, guide, rule).  Although adopted as a metaphorical device to describe even inanimate objects, anorexia is most often (wrongly) used as verbal shorthand for the clinical condition anorexia nervosa.  The former is the relatively rare condition in which appetite is lost for no apparent reason; the latter the more common eating disorder related to most cases to body image.  Interestingly, within the English-speaking world, there are no variant pronunciations.  Anorexia & anorexiant are nouns, anorexic is a noun & adjective and anorexically is an adverb; the noun plural is anorexics

Anorexia Nervosa and the DSM

A classic pro-ana image.

The pro-ana community has created its own sub-set of standard photographic angles, rather as used car sites typically feature certain images such as the interior, the odometer, the engine etc.  Among the most popular images posted on "thinspiration" pages are those which show bone definition through skin and, reflecting the superior contrast possible, there's a tendency use grayscale, usually converted from color originals.  The favored body parts include the spine, hip bones, clavicles (collar bones) and the shoulder blades.  Although documented since antiquity, the condition in its modern form wasn't noted in western medical literature until an 1873 paper presented to the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) called “Anorexia Hysterica”, a description of a loss of appetite without an apparent gastric cause.  That same year, a similar condition was mentioned in a French publication, also called “l’anorexie hystérique”, and described food refusal combined with hyperactivity.  Although the author of the earlier work had within a year changed the descriptor to “Anorexia Nervosa”, the implication in all these papers was of an affliction exclusively female, something very much implied in “l’anorexie hystérique”, hysteria then a mainstream diagnosis and one thought inherently "a condition of women".

A slight Lindsay Lohan (during "thin phase") demonstrates the "anorexic look" which is something distinct from the clinically defined condition "anorexia nervosa" although there's obviously sometimes overlap.

After its acceptance as a psychogenic disorder in the late nineteenth century, anorexia nervosa (AN) was the first eating disorder placed in the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).  In the first edition (DSM-I (1952)), it was considered a psycho-physiological reaction (a neurotic illness).  In the DSM-II (1968), it was listed with special symptoms & feeding disturbances, which also included pica and rumination.  In DSM-III (1980), eating disorders were classified under disorders of childhood or adolescence, perhaps, at least in part, contributing to the under-diagnosis of later-onset cases.  At that time, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) created two specific categories that formally recognized the diagnosis of eating disorders: AN and binge eating (called bulimia in DSM-III and bulimia nervosa (BN; the obsessive regurgitation of food) in both the revised DSM-III (1987) and DSM-IV (1994).  In the DSM-IV, all other clinically significant eating disorder symptoms were absorbed by the residual categories of eating disorder not otherwise specified (EDNOS) and binge-eating disorder (BED), noting the disorders were the subjects for further research.  Subsequently, When the DSM-IV was revised (2000), eating disorders moved to an independent section.  The DSM-5 (2013) chapter for eating disorders added to the alphabet soup.  In addition to pica, AN, BN and BED, DSM-5 added  avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) and other specified feeding or eating disorder (OSFED), the latter including some other peculiar pathological eating patterns, like atypical AN (where all other criteria for AN are met, but weight is in the normal range).

Logo of the Butterfly Foundation for Eating Disorders.

Strikingly, although there are Western countries in which anorexia kills more people than road trauma, even within among mental health clinicians there appears to be some reticence in dealing with patients.  Despite it being a mental health condition with a high fatality rate, there seems still a perception the root cause is “mere vanity” and something of a self-indulgent among young, white, middle class females who spend too much time on TikTok and Instagram middle; essentially, they’re often thought exemplars of the “worried well”.  The problem is acknowledged by some specialists who claim because of these perceptions within the mental health community; treatment regimes have in recent decades shown few advances.  Among psychiatrists and psychologists the notion of anorexia being a “self-inflicted problem of the privileged” is not universal but critics do say that despite the disturbing death toll (some studies claiming a fifth of patients die within 20 years), there is still some tendency to trivialise the condition.  In Australia, the Butterfly Foundation is a national charity offering services to those affected by eating disorders and body image issues, the coverage not limited to sufferers but available also to friends, families and support communities.  Although Anorexia Nervosa is the best known of the eating conditions, Butterfly Foundation functions as a kind of clearing house for all, listing the most frequently diagnosed as:

Anorexia Nervosa is characterised by restrictive eating that leads to a person being unable to maintain what is considered to be a normal and healthy weight. People experiencing Anorexia Nervosa possess an intense fear of gaining weight or becoming overweight, no matter their current weight and appearance.

Bulimia Nervosa is characterised by repeated episodes of binge eating, followed by compensatory behaviours, such a purging or excessive exercise. People experiencing Bulimia Nervosa often place an excessive emphasis on their body shape or weight.

Binge Eating Disorder is characterised by episodes of eating large amounts of food over very short periods of time, with no compensatory behaviours. People who experience binge eating often feel a loss of control during episodes of binge eating.

Unspecified Feeding or Eating Disorder (UFED) refers to disordered feeding or eating behaviour that causes clinically significant distress but which does not meet the full criteria for any of the other eating disorder categories. UFED is one of the most common eating disorders.

Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorders (OSFED) may present with many symptoms of other eating disorders, but where the person doesn’t meet the full criteria for diagnosis of those eating disorders. OSFED is no less serious and with treatment, recovery is possible.

Disordered eating is a disturbed and unhealthy eating patterns. They can include restrictive dieting, compulsive eating or skipping meals. Disordered eating behaviours, and in particular dieting are the most common indicators of the development of an eating disorder.

Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) involves significant aversion and avoidance of food and eating, and may include highly selective eating habits, disturbed feeding patterns, or both.

PICA is an eating disorder where people eat things that aren’t considered food. For example, they may eat dirt, chalk, soap, hair, laundry detergent, among other things.

Orthorexia isn’t currently recognised as an official eating disorder diagnosis, however there is growing recognition that this may be a distinct eating disorder. It involves an obsession with healthy, or “clean” eating. People will often obsess about the benefits of healthy foods, food quality, but not necessarily quantity of food.