when most people find out that i don’t eat honey because i’m a vegan, they’re shocked. while it’s not a difficult concept to grasp, it’s not as quickly understood as why i don’t eat meat.
so why isn’t honey vegan?
the simplest answer as to why honey is not vegan is because it is an animal byproduct. conventional knowledge tells us that honey comes from happy little bees living in a quaint forest somewhere, creating their magically delicious sweetener for all the world to enjoy.
what most people don’t know is honey actually comes from bee farmers who replace each colony’s queen frequently in order to stimulate production. because the colonies store their honey to eat during the winter, many of these farmers let their colonies die or kill them before the cold season hits. that way they can harvest the honey for themselves. if you want to learn more, here’s a great site that explains it all.
what do muffins have to do with it?
my inspiration for this post was fueled by a very disappointing experience I had at argo tea in lincoln park this weekend. argo used to be one of my favorite morning coffee shops because they served vegan muffins from the chicago diner. when they stopped carrying the diner’s muffins and started serving their own instead, my patronage slowly dwindled.
i decided to stop in this weekend to see if they still carried vegan muffins, as i was too lazy to cook my own breakfast. sure enough, they had a “vegan muffins” section in their bakery case. as i waited in line, i noticed some small type on the sign that read “*contains honey.” there was no asterisk attached to either flavor of muffin listed, so i thought perhaps there might be another kind containing honey that was not available.
when i got up to the register, i asked if all the “vegan muffins” contained honey and the guy behind the counter said yes. so i replied, “you realize they aren’t vegan muffins then, right?” he was visibly irritated at my insistence and stated, “everyone says that. so honey comes from bees, big deal.” obviously, he didn’t get it and i didn’t feel like wasting any more of my time trying to explain to him that a “vegan muffin” containing honey is just a muffin.
so i walked out of the store disappointed and hungry, and i will not be going back.
That’s good that so many other people educated him about veganism. He might have gotten tired of hearing it, but now he sure knows that honey is not vegan :) Hopefully they’ll change the sign soon or start making real vegan muffins.
The honey issue really bothers me. A lot of people say they’re vegan and still eat honey. (Which, to me is not a huge deal. I’m a bit of a pragmatist and would rather everyone just stop eating meat, dairy and eggs than quibble over honey). But the problem is they want to be called vegan. That’s like the pescoterians who want to be called vegetarian. No, I’m not the vegan police and I’m not going to take away anyone’s vegan card, but I’m going to call those people beegans not vegans. And they can get annoyed or whatever, but I refuse to change THE definition of vegan to suit their honey fetish.
These honey-lovers claim veganism is about abstaining from using sentient beings and since they don’t think bees are sentient, they consume bee products. But that’s not what veganism is. Veganism is about abstaining from using animal products. And bees are animals. So it’s not vegan. Moreover, who knows if they’re sentient or not? We don’t really know what bees feel or think. I think we should be agnostic about it and play it safe. Which is worse: a) to cause pain when you think you’re not causing pain or b) to abstain from causing pain even if no pain is caused either way? The ethical answer is b.
BEE-sides, we don’t need honey. It really is just a luxury item and there’s not great justification for it’s use.