Google Made Its Salad Emoji Vegan And Twitter Is Upset

salad emoji google Left: Emojipedia;Right:Google
Holly Van Hare|

In an attempt to offend fewer people, Google offended most of Twitter when it removed the egg from the Android salad emoji in a new update announced June 6. The emoji, which used to include a salad with light-colored lettuce, tomatoes, and a hard-boiled egg, now contains only lettuce and tomato.

"There's big talk about inclusion and diversity at Google," tweeted Jennifer Daniel, head of design for Google emoji, "so if you need any evidence of Google is making this priority may I direct your attention to the [salad] emoji — we've removed the egg in Android P beta 2, making this a more inclusive vegan salad."

 

In response, Twitter replied with a storm of anger and sarcasm. Though the emoji shows a salad appropriate for vegans and omnivores alike, neither party seems to be happy with the change.

"This is the kind of salad my vegan friends complain about as the 'vegan option' at many restaurants," complained one user.

"I'm feeling left out. I demand they make a salad emoji for me that has fries on it," complained another.

Others poked fun at the fact that this new salad emoji might not even be entirely inclusive.

"What about tomato allergies?" @DJD_Allday challenged. "So not woke."

 

 

Daniel, upon receiving these incensed replies to the subtle emoji change, tweeted again, suggesting an entirely different reason for changing the emoji: health.

"Hello carnivores, vegans and everyone in between! Just want to clarify that the goal of salad emoji redesign was to create an image more faithful to unicode's description. 'A bowl of healthy salad, containing lettuce, tomato, and other salad items such as cucumber.' Bon appetite!"

 

But this explanation, which sparked a fury of debate over whether eggs are healthy or not, had one fatal flaw: It's missing those "other salad items."

"I see no cucumber," tweeted @kellilb, "this emoji lies."

The Daily Meal has reached out to Google for comment. But this isn't the first time Twitter has raged over Google's emoji-related decisions. In October, the company ignited a passionate debate over the placement of cheese on a cheeseburger. More recently, they corrected a blatant mistake in their beer emoji.

But we didn't expect such ferocity to crop up over salad — though, this one does look pretty sad. Maybe Google should browse through these not-sad salad recipes for a little healthy inspiration.

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