How New Emojis Can Help Those With Food Allergies

Emojis have opened up a new realm of texting communication. Before this revolution, how else could we effectively express that we wanted ramen or were feeling like a dancing lady in a red dress? Words?

Hiroyuki Komatsu, an engineer at Google, recently proposed to Unicode Consortium (the organization that dictates what is worthy of becoming an emoji) that we as a society put emojis to better — possibly life-saving — use, according to Food and Wine.

Thinking as a traveler, Komatsu proposed that common food allergens such as peanuts, eggs, milk and gluten be added to the vast options of emojis, in case, say, someone traveling in a foreign country doesn't know the Dutch word for "wheat." (It's "tarwe," in case you're curious).

The proposal is just that for now, and there is no word on how long it could take before you can easily show a waiter a combination of crab emoji + hospital emoji + dead emoji. The good news is there are already plenty of ways to creatively express the equally necessary cheese emoji.