Vegans who eat honey: How do you justify that?
August 27th, 2009 | by beekeeper |
Madness asked:
I was recently on the fence about eating honey as a vegan, but I ultimately decided not to consume honey anymore after I heard the horrors of the commercial beekeeping industry- which, I’m not quite sure if the rumnors are true. So those of you who are vegan or near vegan, why do you eat honey?
I’m only trying to figure out if there are any reasons I should be okay with eating honey.
beekeeping
I was recently on the fence about eating honey as a vegan, but I ultimately decided not to consume honey anymore after I heard the horrors of the commercial beekeeping industry- which, I’m not quite sure if the rumnors are true. So those of you who are vegan or near vegan, why do you eat honey?
I’m only trying to figure out if there are any reasons I should be okay with eating honey.
beekeeping
4 Responses to “Vegans who eat honey: How do you justify that?”
By Tracy on Aug 27, 2009 | Reply
I’m a non honey vegan and my boyfriend is a honey eating vegan. He eats honey for the convenience (honey roasted nuts, some breads, bottled tea, etc) I understand being on the fence about honey. In my opinion you can be vegan either way.
The fact that he went from meat eating to “pescoterian” to honey eating vegan is an admirable jump.
It sounds as though you really don’t want to eat honey. I would suggest not eating it. It has so much sugar you’re better off with agave nectar. It tastes just like honey, no bees were involved, and it is delicious!
By xcrun99 on Aug 28, 2009 | Reply
Vegans justify the consumption of honey differently, as it varies from vegan to vegan; some do eat honey and some don’t, because not all people are vegans do to animal rights. (just like some vegetarians are pescetarians and eat fish, or some people are quasi-vegetarians for health reasons).
Personally, I am a vegan who eats honey, however, I do not consider myself a “pure” vegan. WHY do I not eat honey? Because personally, the reason I am vegan is for animal rights, and frankly, I’ve researched and have not found enough bee abuse to be convincing. So I eat honey…but if someone has some strong evidence to prove otherwise, I’ll gladly stop the honey eating.
“PURE” vegans (what I refer to as those who don’t use ANY animals with brains in ANY way) are the ones who DO NOT eat honey (typically). I know a few of these, and their reasoning is that they believe that we don’t need to use animals of any kind to live, so thus, they do not eat honey or slaughter animals, etc. Some may be a mixture of animal rights and this belief, or some other hybrids, and some may have a totally different reason for not eating honey all together, but I find that this is usually the reason.
So, I say this: a person who eats honey is not a vegan, because vegans don’t use any animals/insects/etc. So yeah, I’m techinically not a real vegan.
Also, I thought it was funny how you asked how vegans “justify” how they eat honey…it doesn’t really need to be “justified”.
Hope this helps.
By stardustl154 on Aug 31, 2009 | Reply
Honey has been proven to be a very healthy food. I do not live my life based on rumor.
By loving life on Sep 1, 2009 | Reply
While I realize that honey is the result of “exploitation” or whatever, you have to remember how many billions of insects are killed when plants are harvested. It’s inevitable that these insects will die…..but in my opinion the bees aren’t much more intelligent than these insects.
I am strict vegetarian or “relaxed vegan” for health reasons. I usually use agave nectar because I prefer the taste, and most commercial honey is basically refined sugar anyway. I think that if a person is vegan for health reasons then there’s no problem with eating honey.