Why is honey not vegan?
Surely you have seen that there is rosemary honey, a thousand flowers honey, eucalyptus honey… but then, is honey not vegan?
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Surely you have seen that there is rosemary honey , a thousand flowers honey, eucalyptus honey… but then , is honey not vegan? The answer is no. Honey is not vegan , it is considered a product of animal origin because bees carry out the transformation process and its plant origin only determines its subsequent classification.
Bees make honey for their own survival , they use it as food and the truth is that they need a great effort to make it. A worker bee will only produce one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.
Bees use honey for food, because flowering only occurs (at least before climate change ) during the spring. In this way, they ensure they have food reserves throughout the year (similar to what happens to ants, only they gather food during the summer).
Why is honey not vegan?
Honey is probably the product that is most often confused with vegan-friendly products. There is a misconception that bees make their honey for us, but as we have just seen, this could not be further from the truth. In fact, most of the honey produced by bees does not reach the hands of the beekeeper, but is consumed by them.
Vegan people eat plant-based . His diet does not include protein or animal products such as eggs, milk or honey. Some vegans also don’t use animal products, such as leather or silk .
1. Lack of ethics: from the perspective of vegans, in addition to honey being a food of animal origin, beekeepers use unethical practices when treating bees. They claim that when beekeepers remove honey from a hive, they replace it with a sugar substitute, which is significantly worse for bee health as it lacks essential micronutrients in honey, according to TheVeganSociety .
2. Unsustainable farming: In addition, they accuse conventional beekeeping of raising honey bees specifically to increase productivity. This selective breeding, they say, reduces the gene pool of the population and increases susceptibility to disease and large-scale mortality.
3. Spread of disease: These diseases are spread to the thousands of pollinators that we and other animals depend on, disproving the common myth that honey production is good for the environment.
4. Imbalance: Mass breeding of honey bees affects populations of other competing nectar-feeding insects, including other bees.
How to substitute honey
If you are one of the people who considers that honey is not vegan and you are looking for an alternative that aligns with your values, you can substitute this food for another such as:
- Date syrup
- Maple syrup
- Molasses
- Caramel syrup
- Agave nectar
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