On 29 Jul 2015, at 18:39, Doug Ewell wrote: > Andrew West wrote:
>> There may be a case to be made for encoding symbols for food allergens >> for labelling purposes, but there is no case for encoding such symbols >> as a form of symbolic language for communication of dietary >> requirements. > For what little it is worth, I agree with Andrew on this. Sorry, I disagree, as I explain in my previous e-mail: http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2015-m08/0009.html > Earlier I mentioned U+2620 SKULL AND CROSSBONES and U+2623 BIOHAZARD SIGN, > two symbols which have been in Unicode since the dawn of time. [...] > While communication about food allergens is undoubtedly important, it's hard to imagine that communication about poisons and biohazards is any less important. Agreed. Itʼs even more important, as food allergies are triggered by slow poisoning through residual pesticides and food additives, and through the consumption of bad quality cereals grown with abuse of mineral fertilizers. This is why U+2620 ☠ SKULL AND CROSSBONES should be used in food labelling whenever the ingredients are *not* organically grown, or certain food additives are used. To complete, I therefore suggest to encode a panel of food hazard symbols, among which: + PESTICIDE RESIDUES SYMBOL + MINERAL FERTILIZER OVERUSE SYMBOL + ARTIFICIALLY COLOURED SYMBOL (use: certain synthetical food colors cause health issues) + STABILIZER SYMBOL + SALTY FOOD SYMBOL + VETERINARY DRUGS RESIDUES SYMBOL (Thatʼs so big an issue that the FDA is validating a *new* drug residues analysis selection model for interstate milk shipping.) and so on. Equally, the artificially impoverished food ingredients like white sugar and white flour, are acting poison-like on metabolical level (more explanations would be off-topic) and must thus be declared whenever they are not recompleted with bran, germ, and molasses. To achieve this, the following pictographs will be useful: + EMPOVERISHED FOOD WARNING SYMBOL + MISSING BRAN AND GERM SYMBOL + MISSING MOLASSES SYMBOL Declaring the least and most probably unexistent traces of food allergens, but concealing from the consumers all these health threatening poisons that are likewise purposely added to everyday food, or the basic carbs are transformed to, is a particularly insidious form of hypocrisy. This criticism must be taken as a motivation to encode these new pictographs. It does not target in any way the proposer of the allergen emojis, nor any other person here around. It refers to the economical background of food allergen labelling, and thus has its place in this thread. Best regards, Marcel Schneider
