If ever there was a trigger word in the vegan community, honey is hands down in the top 5. I’ve never seen more of a divide in the community then when someone brings up honey. Some of you non-vegans might be surprised to learn that there’s more foods we (vegans) don’t eat aside from meat and dairy. (And eggs)
I personally don’t eat honey, for reasons I’ll talk about below, but I want to start this by saying I didn’t write this article to sway anyone into not eating it. I understand honey has a lot of health benefits and it can even be used as medicine. I’m just a faceless post on a website stating the facts. What you do with those facts is completely up to you. I can’t force you, the same way I can’t force you to go vegan. All I can do is present the facts and hope you’ll make the compassionate choice.
But wait, aren’t they just bugs? Why should we care? Those are great questions, and, a valid point. Why care about bugs?
If you’re a vegan reading this, you should already know that we don’t wear silk, and that comes from worms. Along that same reasoning, animals are just animals, why bother sparing them? While I don’t have a dedicated article to the horrors animals endure in slaughterhouses, how about we go with sympathy? Animals have nervous systems, feel pain, joy, sadness, emotions – some of them are smarter then dogs, even. And eating dogs is ‘wrong’, right? It’s not a question about being exactly the same, it’s more having compassion for another living thing that we share the earth with. No offence, but animals were here long before humans, and they’ll (hopefully) be here long after we’re gone. Unfortunately, because of humans, lots of animals are now in danger of extinction. (Bees are on that list, BTW)
Let’s look at some facts about honey:
– It takes pollen from five million flowers to produce one pound of honey
– Beekeeper’s use cyanide gas so bees don’t fly away
– Clip wings of queen and/or will transfer her to a different colony (where she’ll most likely get killed by the other bees)
– Kill off the colonies because it’s not cost effective to have them fed through the winter months
(Want to learn more? I recommend checking out What The Health?)
And, of course, there’s the two reasons that made me stop eating honey:
– It’s bee vomit
– Stealing from baby bees
Yes, eating honey is stealing it from baby bees. You’re literally stealing candy from a baby. They produce honey as a way to get nutrients to the babies. You wouldn’t voluntarily steal food from any other baby, right? So why do it to bees? Not only is that like, super not cool, but bees are essential to the eco-system. The more we mistreat them to produce honey, the more endangered they become. The more endangered they become, well, it’s goodbye planet.
As I said above, it’s truly a personal choice, but I personally feel that 1) Ingesting someone else’s vomit is gross, and 2) I wouldn’t steal food from any other species baby, so why do it to bees? (Even if they are ‘just bugs’)
If you could help keep kids getting food/nutrients they need, and help the earth, by doing something as simple as changing what you put in your tea, or on your toast, is it really even still a question of whether or not you should?
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