Six new food emoji run from salty to sweet

Emojis have grown ever more diverse in recent iterations, and are expected to incorporate a wide new range of foods in the next iterations. — dpa

What does a mooncake have in common with a cupcake? It's not a trick question – they're two out of six new food emoji that are set to be released in June 2018, along with a batch of dozens of others.

In principle, foods that people want to tell others that they're eating, whether on Instagram or in a text, are the ones more likely to make the cut, hence the inclusion of the two much-beloved, and often cute and celebratory, desserts in the latest release.

Mango lovers had petitioned the Unicode Consortium in charge of emoji with a hashtag calling for their favourite fruit to be added. Whether it experiences the same fate as the notoriously suggestive peach emoji will be seen.

"Leafy green" should make health fanatics happy, serving as a stand-in for everyone's favourite healthy eating poster child, kale, as well as spinach – for "fans of the cartoon character Popeye the Sailor, any athletes interested in working out, or people who want to symbolise iron," according to the proposal to create the new emoji.

The salt shaker emoji will probably be used less for food and more for proverbs invoking salt, while the bagel emoji's lack of schmear could provoke a scandal equal to that of the disastrous Google burger emoji.

The new symbols are expected to arrive on phones from August onwards, as manufacturers must incorporate them into their operating systems. — dpa