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Unicode Consortium Looks At Symbols For Allergies

Posted by samzenpus on from the do-you-know-what-this-means? dept.

AmiMoJo writes: A proposal (PDF) submitted by a Google engineer to the Unicode Consortium asks that food allergies get their own emojis and be added to the standard. The proposal suggests the addition of peanuts, soybeans, buckwheat, sesame seeds, kiwi fruit, celery, lupin beans, mustard, tree nuts, eggs, milk products and gluten. According to TNW: "This proposal will take a little longer to become reality — it's still in very early stages and needs to be reviewed by the Unicode Consortium before it can move forward, but it'll be a great way for those with allergies to quickly express them."

3 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Food Allergies by viperidaenz · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's at least two factors that come in to it.

    1) People confuse intolerance for allergy. An allergy is when your immune system attacks food. Intolerance is when your body can't process the food properly.
    2) People sanitise everything these days and don't expose their children to anything dirty. They grow up with poorly developed immune systems.

  2. Re: Food Allergies by jonwil · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is some evidence out there to suggest the practice of shielding really little kids (babies on up) from these allergens (which is something more parents are doing because of concerns about the risk) is actually increasing the chance that they will become allergic as they get older and that introducing kids to all these foods very early will lower the risk.

  3. Re:There was a point where Unicode needed to stop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, it's in a proposal, right next to owls and bats...

    http://www.unicode.org/L2/L201...