Is honey vegan?!
Is honey vegan?
okay, i have recently become vegitarian. so i read the weird vegitarian sight, it also talked about vegans.
a vegan is someone who dosent eat any animal products. no meat, no dairy, no animal skins, no animal fat. nothing that comes from a creature.
alot of people become vegan bcuzz they think that its wrong how the animals don't have the right to live, or be happy. they torture cows to get milk, so basicly the whole *great cheese comes from happy cows* is a totel lie. they also bcome vegans bcuzz its much healthier.
so, this leads me to my question.
is honey vegan? it comes from a creature, but i have seen vegan people eat honey. honey comes from bee's, but bee's are not animals.
i would think it would be vegan, it comes from a creature. and to get the honey they pretty much distroy the bee hive and take all the food. so is it vegan?
my friend says it is vegan, bcuzz a bee is not an animal.
so what? bugs don't have the right to be happy or live or have a home? but pigs and chickens and cows do? that can't be right.
if vegans bcome vegans out of love for animals, how can they eat honey? so agean, bugs can't be apart of that love?
well, i am pretty sure its NOT vegan. but then agean, i am not a vegan. i am just curius, i have been thinking about the whole honey thing for a week now. i don't plan on bcomming vegan though.
so, reply to this with what you think! go ask your vegan friends! i really wanna know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHG! this really is driving me crazy!
-madalyn
Answers:
I personally see vegan as not eating anything that comes from a living creature, so honey is not vegan. However, some vegans do eat honey because they don't consider bees to be animals. Which I personally don't understand. It varies from person to person.
a bee isn't an animal
All the vegans I know won't eat honey because it comes from a living creature and the methods of getting honey are cruel. And my Buddhist friends agree that honey is probably more cruel than drinking milk since more bee lives are lost making it.
Edit: I should probably add that this is a question I love asking people to get their responses to it. Sometimes people draw the lines where they are comfortable with them being.
It isn't vegan.It goes against veganism,it requires the exploitation of an animal,it technically isn't an animal,but it still isn't vegan.True vegans won't eat honey,but I'm not gonna tell someone they aren't vegan if they eat honey,I'm not the vegan police or anything,but for the people who call themselves vegetarians while they eat fish,that's a different story...
The difference between vegans and nonvegans, however, is the element of intent. Vegans consciously strive to do no harm to any sentient life, including insects. This does not mean that vegans do not hurt others inadvertently, but that it is never their aim to do so.
Honey is made from sucrose-rich flower nectar that is collected by honeybees and then regurgitated back and forth among them until it is partially digested. After the final regurgitation, the bees fan the substance with their wings until it is cool and thick. This mixture, which we call honey (which is essentially bee vomit), is then stored in the cells of the bees' hive and used as their sole source of nutrition in cold weather and other times when alternative food sources are not available. During the collection of flower nectar, the bees also pollinate plants. This is part of the natural process of life and is necessary and unavoidable. Even though humans inadvertently benefit, the bees do not pollinate plants in order to serve human needs; it is simply a secondary aspect of their nectar collecting. The honey that bees produce is stored in their hives for their own purposes. When humans remove honey from the hive, they take something that is not rightfully theirs.
To collect honey, beekeepers must temporarily remove a number of the bees from their home. During the course of bee management and honey collection, even the most careful beekeeper cannot avoid inadvertently injuring, squashing, or otherwise killing some of the bees. Other commodities may be taken from the hive as well, including beeswax, honeycomb, pollen, propolis, and royal jelly.
Bees are not harmed by the process of pollination -- it is something they would do whether or not humans were involved or reaped any profit. If one were to stretch the point, using honey could, in a broad sense, be considered analogous to dairying. Furthermore, there is no reason to take honey from bees other than to sell it. Utilizing bees to pollinate crops in no way necessitates ravaging their hive.
Although the issue of honey is not deemed the most pressing concern of many vegans, honey is nevertheless considered an animal product. Because there are numerous alternatives to honey, from a vegan perspective there is no justifiable rationale for using it. Furthermore, the vegan position on honey is definitive. Honey was prohibited for use by vegans according to the 1944 manifesto of the British Vegan Society (veganism's founding organization), a position consistent with the requirement for full (vegan) membership in the American Vegan Society since its inception in 1960.
Sweeteners are not necessary for human health. There are virtually no essential nutrients (in fact, there are hardly any nutrients at all) in sweeteners, so our use of them is purely for personal pleasure. Although the labor force is typically exploited on sugar plantations, even humans with minimal choices have far more options than the honeybees. Humans can live quite well without sugar or honey. As a rule, extensive use of sweeteners is found only in affluent societies. If vegans want to indulge in sweets, there are many substitutes available: organic, unbleached cane sugar (somewhat kinder to the environment, but not necessarily better for the workers); beet sugar; maple sugar; maple syrup; agave syrup; concentrated fruit syrups; rice syrup; barley malt; and sorghum syrup, among others. We do not need to choose between exploiting humans or bees in order to satisfy our sweet tooth. Concerned vegans can avoid harming either by eliminating sweets from their diet or by choosing compassionate alternatives.
Vegan is someone who does not eat anything that comes from a live critter........cows, pigs, bees, etc.
also, who says being a vegan is healthier...its not really.
You aren't getting alot of the nutrients that you need to get from meat. God gave us animals for a reason. There are some meats that are not so healthy......meat from pigs, for example.
Hi, bees are animals. They are invertebrates and insects respectively. Honey is not vegan but a friend of mine says that vegans can use something called agave nectar which tastes identical to honey but does not come from animals.
Honey is not vegan. It's weird to say that honey is ok because bees aren't animals -even though it's destructive to the bees, but milk isn't even though it's not very destructive to the cows. I'm not a vegan, not even a vegetarian, but a lot of my friends are. Which brings me to another thing- I'm told vegans can't eat gelatin, because they say it's made from horse hooves, but don't they synthesize that now?
A true vegan would not, since bees are animals and they produce honey.
Bees are clasified as in kingdom animalia, and therefore are animals. As strange as it may seem, even a sea sponge is an animal. Bees are not vertebrates, but are still animals.
And to those who say a vegan doesn't eat anything from a living creature...plants are living as well, and vegans eat them. If they didn't eat anything from any living creature they would pretty much be left with rocks and plastic. Vegans don't eat any animal product.
No, vegans don't eat honey because it's an animal product. A bee is an insect, but it's also a kind of animal.
ok get down to basics PLANT,ANIMAL,HUMAN u decide.....
I didn't realize that vegans are so up tight over such a simple pleasure such as honey.
Some vegans see it as an animal by product and bees do die after they make the honey, but some see it as bees HAVE to make honey, so it's there to eat.
Nope.
It is a personal choice. My relative eats those little corn candies (which have honey) but avoids all other honey and dairy products. Considering the condition in which the honey is extracted from the bees I do not find it inhumane at all (compared to the castrating debeaking and drugging of factory farm animals). Whichever decision you shouldn't feel guilty. Good luck!
im not vegan or vegitarian but you shouldnt be aloud to eat honey becasue if your gonna have a ***** fit about eating cheese n'stuff than honey is out of the question it comes from a living thing and thats the point in being vegan or vegitarian. if your gonna do it do it right.