Root Vegetable Emoji

A round root vegetable, pulled from the earth with leafy greens still attached. Most platforms render it as a beetroot (deep red/purple), though the official Unicode name is deliberately generic: "root vegetable." That's because the original proposal (L2/23-257) by Thomas Woodside and Nicholas Beninato was titled "BEET" but the Unicode Technical Committee broadened it to cover turnips, radishes, and other bulbous root vegetables too.

The proposal itself is a fun read. It argues that beets are "especially distinct from the existing root vegetables portrayed in Unicode" (i.e. the 🥕 carrot and 🥔 potato), and points out a rich vein of cross-language wordplay: in English, "beet" is a homophone of "beat" (music, winning). In Czech, the word for beet can mean a human head. In French, it can mean an idiot or red wine. In Uzbek, it refers to embarrassment. One vegetable, six metaphors.

This is one of the newest emojis in existence. It was approved in Unicode 16.0 (September 2024) and started rolling out to devices in early 2025. Apple added it in iOS 18.4, Google in Android 16, Samsung in One UI 7. If you send this to someone on an older phone, they'll see a blank square. Which is kind of the root vegetable experience in a nutshell: underappreciated by people who aren't paying attention.

🫜 is still finding its feet (or roots). Because it's brand new, it hasn't developed the thick layer of social meaning that older food emojis carry. But early usage clusters around a few lanes.

The most immediate: healthy eating and cooking content. Plant-based recipe posts, farmers market hauls, garden harvest photos. It slots in alongside 🥕, 🥬, and 🧅 as part of the "I actually eat vegetables" flex on Instagram.

Then there's the Dwight Schrute contingent. If you know, you know. The Office) fans have been waiting for a beet emoji since approximately 2007, and now that it exists, it's showing up in bios, display names, and as a reaction to anything vaguely Schrute-coded. Thomas Woodside, the emoji's proposer, literally has 🫜 in his X/Twitter display name.

The "beat" homophone angle is starting to emerge too. DJs and music producers dropping "can't 🫜 this" and "drop the 🫜" in their captions. It's the kind of pun that's too obvious to resist and too fun to hate.

Because this emoji is still rolling out to devices, adoption is naturally limited. Give it another year and it'll have a clearer identity. For now, it's the emoji equivalent of a farmer's market heirloom variety: the people who use it love it, and everyone else hasn't tried it yet.

The beet is a far more consequential vegetable than it gets credit for. The beetroot (Beta vulgaris) was first domesticated in the ancient Middle East, primarily for its greens. The ancient Greeks and Romans knew it but mostly ate the leaves. It wasn't until the 16th century that Europeans started breeding beets for their roots rather than their tops.

Then Napoleon changed everything. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British naval blockade of continental Europe cut off cane sugar imports from the Caribbean. In 1747, Prussian chemist Andreas Sigismund Marggraf had discovered that beets contain sugar, and his student Franz Karl Achard built the first beet sugar factory in 1801. But it wasn't until Napoleon visited a beet sugar factory in Passy on March 25, 1811, that the industry exploded. Napoleon poured resources into beet sugar production, and by 1813 France went from 4 sugar factories to 300. A military blockade accidentally created a global industry.

Today, about 20% of the world's sugar comes from sugar beets, and Russia produces roughly 12-14 million metric tons of beetroot annually, making it the world's largest producer. The vegetable that Napoleon weaponized against a trade embargo now feeds hundreds of millions of people.

The beet's other claim to geopolitical fame: borscht. The beetroot soup is claimed by Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and Jewish communities, but in 2022 UNESCO fast-tracked "Culture of Ukrainian borscht cooking" onto the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, citing the Russian invasion. Ukraine's Culture Minister declared "the victory in the war for borsch is ours." Russia's foreign ministry called it an attempt to make a shared dish belong to one nationality. A soup, a war, and a vegetable at the center of both.

The path from proposal to your keyboard took four years. Thomas Woodside first submitted the beet emoji proposal to the Unicode Consortium in August 2021 as L2/23-257. The UTC accepted it on November 1, 2023, but renamed it from "BEET" to "ROOT VEGETABLE" (U+1FADCU+1FADC) to keep it category-generic, following their practice of avoiding overly specific food names. It shipped as part of Unicode 16.0 on September 10, 2024, alongside seven other new emojis including 🪏 Shovel, 🪗 Harp, and 🫟 Splatter.

The root vegetable emoji joined the food-vegetable subgroup, which already included 🥕 Carrot, 🥔 Potato, 🧅 Onion, 🧄 Garlic, and 🍠 Roasted Sweet Potato. Before this emoji existed, beet fans had to improvise with 🍠 (wrong color, wrong vegetable) or describe their beet love in words like animals.

1. 1747Andreas Sigismund Marggraf discovers sugar in beets, laying the foundation for the beet sugar industry↗
2. 1811Napoleon visits a beet sugar factory and industrializes production. France goes from 4 to 300 factories by 1813↗
3. 2021Thomas Woodside submits the beet emoji proposal to the Unicode Consortium↗
4. 2022UNESCO fast-tracks Ukrainian borscht cooking onto the Intangible Cultural Heritage list↗
5. 2023Unicode Technical Committee accepts the beet emoji, renames it to ROOT VEGETABLE (U+1FADC)
6. 2024Root vegetable emoji approved in Unicode 16.0 / Emoji 16.0 (September 10)↗
7. 2025Apple ships root vegetable emoji in iOS 18.4. Google, Samsung, WhatsApp follow↗

The beet isn't just a vegetable in Eastern Europe. It's a cultural marker.

In Ukraine, beets are inseparable from borscht, the beetroot soup that became a proxy battlefield in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. When UNESCO designated Ukrainian borscht cooking as endangered heritage in 2022, it was as much a political statement as a cultural one. Beets symbolize Ukrainian identity, hospitality, and resilience.

In Russia, beetroot is the backbone of national cuisine beyond borscht: vinegret (a cold beet salad), herring under a fur coat (selyodka pod shuboy), and pickled beets are kitchen staples. Russia produces more beetroot than any other country, roughly 12-14 million metric tons per year.

In Poland, beet soup (barszcz czerwony) is a Christmas Eve tradition. Serving it with uszka (small dumplings) on December 24th is non-negotiable in many Polish families.

In India, beetroot is common in curries, chutneys, and desserts. It's valued for both nutrition and its natural red coloring. South Indian beetroot poriyal (stir-fry) is a weeknight staple.

In English-speaking countries, the idiom "beet red" or "red as a beetroot" has been in use since at least the 19th century to describe someone flushing with embarrassment. The Brits say "go beetroot," Americans say "turn beet red." Same vegetable, different prepositions.

In the fitness world, beetroot juice has become a performance-enhancing supplement. The International Olympic Committee recommends 5-9 mmol of nitrate (from beetroot) 2-3 hours before exercise. Cyclists who drank beetroot juice before a time trial were 3% faster and produced more power per pedal stroke. The beet went from peasant food to legal doping.

• •The largest beet ever grown weighed 23.4 kg (51.6 lbs), set by Ian Neale of the UK in 2001. That's roughly the weight of a medium-sized dog. Shaped like a vegetable.
• •Russia produces about 12-14 million metric tons of table beetroot per year, roughly a third of global production. For context, that's about 85 kg of beets per Russian citizen annually.
• •Beetroot can turn your urine pink or red, a condition called beeturia. It affects 10-14% of the population and is completely harmless, but it's alarmed enough people to generate its own Wikipedia article.
• •The word "borscht" likely derives from the Slavic word for hogweed) (borshch), a plant originally used to make the soup before beets replaced it in the 16th century. The soup kept the name of an ingredient it no longer contains.
• •Thomas Woodside, who proposed the beet emoji to Unicode in 2021, waited three years for it to be approved. He now has 🫜 permanently in his X/Twitter display name. That's commitment to a root vegetable.

• •Sending 🫜 to someone unfamiliar with new emojis will likely render as a blank square or a generic placeholder. Always have a text backup through 2025.
• •The beat/beet pun doesn't translate outside English. In Spanish, French, or German, sending 🫜 in a music context will just look like you really like vegetables.
• •Some people assume this is a radish or turnip. It technically can represent any root vegetable, but most platform designs render it as a beetroot (red/purple). If you specifically mean turnip, you might need to clarify in words.

• •The Office) (NBC, 2005-2013) made beets a comedy staple through Dwight Schrute's 60-acre beet farm. The show's most-quoted line involving beets: Jim Halpert's impersonation of Dwight in S3E21 "Product Recall" — "Fact. Bears eat beets. Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." Rainn Wilson (Dwight) later pointed out that Dwight himself never actually says this line. It was Jim the whole time.
• •The UNESCO borscht ruling of 2022 turned a beetroot soup into international news. Ukraine's Culture Minister posted "the victory in the war for borsch is ours" on Telegram. Russia called it cultural appropriation in reverse. A soup made of beets became a proxy for territorial sovereignty. You can't make this up.
• •Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020) featured a turnip trading system that turned millions of lockdown-era gamers into root vegetable day traders. The r/acturnips subreddit became a speculative trading floor. Google searches for "turnip" spiked to 4x normal in Q2 2020. Root vegetables as meme stock, essentially.
• •The idiom "beet red" has been in English since at least the 19th century and remains one of the most commonly used color comparisons for embarrassment. Cambridge Dictionary lists both "go beet red" (American) and "go beetroot" (British). The beet's staining power became a permanent metaphor for human biology.
• •VeggieTales (1993-present), the Christian CGI animated series, featured various root vegetables as characters. Their film "Beauty and the Beet" is a direct pun on the fairy tale. The series is one of the earliest computer-animated franchises and used vegetables as a way to retell Bible stories, proving that root vegetables can carry narrative weight.
• •Beetroot juice's athletic performance benefits have been covered by ScienceAlert, the Cleveland Clinic, and the IOC itself. An umbrella review of 80+ clinical trials confirmed measurable improvements in cycling power and running economy. The beet went from peasant food to legal performance-enhancing substance with peer-reviewed backing.

• •Root vegetable is encoded at U+1FADCU+1FADC in the Supplementary Private Use Areas block. It requires Unicode 16.0 support, which means fallback handling is essential through at least 2026.
• •The emoji has no skin tone variants and no ZWJ sequences. It's a simple single-codepoint emoji: \u{1FADC}\u{1FADC}. However, some platforms may add U+FE0FU+FE0F (variation selector-16) to force emoji presentation.
• •Shortcode support is still rolling out. Discord uses :root_vegetable::root_vegetable:, Slack may not support it yet. Check platform-specific shortcode lists before building emoji pickers.
• •When using this in web content, always provide a text fallback (e.g., <span aria-label="root vegetable">🫜</span><span aria-label="root vegetable">🫜</span>) since screen readers and older browsers may not recognize it.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.