Sick of Atkins? Try the All-Emoji diet!

Sep 5, 2014

Have you ever noticed that there’s no sandwich emoji? Or that vegetables are totally under-represented in the list of coloured icons on your phone? Well, writer Kelsey Roxroat certainly noticed, and decided it was time to see if emojis really could dictate what she ate.

Over the course of a week, Kelsey made a mission to eat her way through all food emojis listed on her iPhone – and nothing else. And so, the All-Emoji diet was born.

At first it seems like it would be fairly easy to manage. Pizza, beer, chips and burgers – yay! But when it comes to non-fast food items, there’s not a whole lot of scope. Of the 59 emojis, 11 are desserts, eight are rice-based (thank you, Japanese designers) and just two are vegetables.

All the same, Kelsey made a fairly good job of her emoji-eating. Day One started off nicely with coffee, banana, strawberries and milk for breakfast, veggie stew (inspired by the “pot of food” emoji), cherries and a lollipop for lunch, and spaghetti and red wine for dinner.

By Day Five though, things got a little more random, with the delicious combination of shrimp, a tangerine and ice cream for lunch. Yummy.

The diet certainly isn’t the next big thing for weight loss, it would seem. “As I assess what I still need to cover in the final days, I notice two common themes: white rice and sugar,” said Kelsey.

All the same though, she did get the chance to try some of the more random Asian foods including dango (those coloured balls on a stick) and oden (the strange meat-like shapes, also on a stick).