🍎 and 🍏, but no raspberry emoji 🤔

👋, it’s Lisa from the communications team at Datawrapper. You’ve probably had lots of festive meals with friends and family in the past few weeks, so let’s stay with that topic. Today: A look back at which food emoji 🍑🍔🥑🍒🥦🍆🥝 were added over the years, and when to expect the next batch.

If you’ve ever tried to make a grocery list using just emoji, you probably hit a wall quickly. “Why has no one thought of an emoji for raspberry?” you may have wondered. “One for dates? Sausage? Hummus?”

You are not the first with these ideas: Lots of people want to see new foods added. Anyone can submit proposals for new emoji, but most simply get declined because of strict selection criteria. You’ll see them in action when skimming proposals like the ones for blueberries (2019, PDF) and ginger (2021, PDF).

Here are all food emojis added over the years:

It's easy to imagine that Unicode — the consortium made up of representatives from Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others who decide which emoji get added — has some regrets. Two apple emoji 🍎🍏 don't seem necessary, nor do two beer emoji 🍺🍻, especially when there's still no emoji for plum, artichoke, or cauliflower.

If you're wondering why there's no 2024 data in the chart, the answer is that getting emoji ready for everyone to use takes time. The mushroom emoji 🍄‍🟫 was proposed by Google employee Jennifer Daniel in December 2022 (PDF) and approved in September 2023. Users on Samsung and Google devices and software could use the new emoji to chat about their mushroom hunts within the next two months; iPhone users had to wait until March 2024. I can't show the emoji approved in September 2024 in the chart above because they're not yet supported.

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Happy new year! I hope you have a great one with lots of delicious food 🍱🍲🌯. Next week, expect a Weekly Chart from my coworker Vivien. See you then!