Photo by: Omari Allen

Emojis, the colorful language inspired by our collective imaginations and invented by The Unicode Technical Committee, now have new food icons. The new emojis include: round waffles, a stick of butter, yerba mate in a gourd with a straw, an onion, bulb of garlic, a juice box, large ice cube and probably the most anticipated, falafel. Although you probably weren’t clamoring for each new option, the additions should nevertheless spice up your text life. 

Considering how prevalent emojis have become in how we communicate, the perfect emoji for a witty response always seems to be missing. The reason behind this lies in the rigorous emoji approval process. Emojis aren’t just updates made in some windowless room by someone sitting behind a computer, the process is actually very democratic. Anyone can submit an emoji suggestion to the Unicode Technical Committee. Meaning, the balut emoji you’ve always been wanting to text your friends is a possibility. You just have to follow these guidelines to submit a new emoji proposal. 

The guidelines are fairly straightforward, but the subsequent deliberation can be tedious. For example, the falafel emoji could’ve been three balls rather than a plateful. Emojis work as a language bridge, so it’s important that designs translate across cultural barriers. Designs also vary from platform to platform. Food is a particularly popular area for emoji enthusiasts, so it’s no surprise many want their favorite dish represented.

With that said, writing about food emojis has made me crave food food. I’m sure these new emojis will inspire many funny convos and hopefully more creative submissions to the committee. I look forward to witnessing the evolution of the emoji language. Who knows, maybe one day someone will create an emoji cafe.