The All Emoji Diet

If you’ve ever found yourself wanting to text a friend an emoji of a burrito and then realized that there is no such thing, you’ve felt Kelsey Rexroat’s pain. But you probably never felt so passionately about it that you decided to go on an all-emoji diet.

Rexroat, a writer for The Atlantic, recently found herself lamenting the lack of logical food emoji as a mere 59 of them are food-themed.

In an effort to expose the seeming randomness of the foods enshrined in emoji, Rexroat decided to embark on a one-week diet, eating only foods that she could text on her iPhone. Goodbye, burritos!

What did she learn? Well, those who prefer to eschew sweets and other carbs probably want to avoid mimicking her experiment. She writes, “This diet is essentially the opposite of Atkins. Of the 59 food emoji, eight incorporate rice and 11 are desserts.”

Additionally, the set of icons is particularly heavy in Japanese items like ramen, udon and sake—which makes sense since emoji originally hail from Japan—but the choices leave many Irish standards, such as the potato off the menu.

She also drank more alcohol than usual — there are emojis for cocktails, wine and beer. “The emoji diet hasn’t left me hungry or dissatisfied — if anything, my dessert binge has added some pounds — but it has slimmed down my wallet,” Rexroat writes.

Basically this diet not for the faint of heart. Do you think you could survive on all-emoji diet?