From realsimple.com
Bee experts share their thoughts on the popular food
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Honey sits in a grey area for vegans because it’s made through the labour of bees, so whether it fits a vegan diet depends on personal beliefs about animal involvement.
- Ethical and small-scale beekeeping can minimize harm and even support ecosystems, but concerns about animal welfare still lead many vegans to avoid honey altogether.
- For those who skip honey, there are plenty of plant-based alternatives—like maple syrup, agave, or date syrup—that offer similar sweetness without using bee products.
Honey is one of the oldest foods we have recorded history for—in fact, humans have been enjoying the sweetener—or using it as a natural remedy—for at least 8,000 years. But with the rise of plant-based eating and vegan diets in recent years, the question of whether or not honey is vegan has emerged for those who avoid animal-based products.
We spoke with two bee experts to learn more about how honey is made and used by bees to ultimately answer this question.
How Honey is Made
It’s first important to note exactly how honey is made when considering this topic.
“Bees fly up to a three mile radius around their hive to gather resources: nectar, pollen, and propolis. To make honey, bees suck the nectar out of the flower. That nectar is put into a separate honey stomach within the bee (called the crop) and then they fly back to the hive,” explains Danielle Brooks, head beekeeper and owner of The Honey Truck Company in St. Augustine, Florida.
Back at the hive, bees take further steps to produce honey. “Upon returning to the hive, the honey bees spread the nectar on the walls of the wax cells, and fan their wings to evaporate off the water,” says Nissa Coit, a former honey bee researcher and educator. As this moisture evaporates, the sugars in the nectar thicken and develop into honey—where the bees then seal it with a thin layer of beeswax.
Honey provides energy and essential nutrients for the bees to survive and thrive, especially in winter when flower nectar isn’t available. The nectar from a staggering two million flowers is required to make just one pound of the popular sweetener. However, healthy bee colonies typically produce more honey than they need, sometimes two to three times more. “The honey bees make, that we harvest, is considered the surplus, meaning they don't need it,” Brooks explains.
Is Honey Vegan?
With this information in mind, does honey technically qualify as vegan?
“While honey bees do not produce honey from their bodies, the way that a cow produces milk, they do labor to produce it, and their bodies modify it,” says Coit. “Essentially, eating honey is stealing a bit of their labor, rather than a product produced by their actual bodies.” Brooks echoes this, adding, “it's not technically a product of the animal.”
That said, some vegans avoid any food whose production is closely tied with animals, which would include honey. One could argue that taking honey from beehives for human consumption negatively impacts bee communities, too. For example, Coit shares that a few squished bees are a standard part of beekeepers’ interactions with the hive throughout the season.
“Sure, not all bees are kept in the best conditions, but if you are a small-scale beekeeping operation, it is easy to maintain a great environment for the bees,” adds Brooks. Ethical beekeepers always ensure their bees have more than enough honey to sustain them until the next harvest period.
Plus, beekeeping (and in turn, honey production) can actually offer important benefits to the environment. “If you practice beekeeping in a holistic and ecological way (as opposed to industrial management), especially if you live somewhere that bees are native to, keeping bees can provide an overall benefit to the population and greater ecosystem,” says Coit. In fact, bees are essential for food production—around 30 percent of the global human food supply is pollinated by bees!
Coit also provides additional food for thought, sharing, “if you replace locally, holistically-produced honey that killed a few individual bees with, say, coconut sugar that was flown on a fossil fuel-burning jet from across the world that originated from a plantation that deforested a rainforest, how many more animals were harmed by that habitat loss?” These factors are important to consider when determining whether gray-area foods—like honey—can be broadly labelled “vegan” or not.
Ultimately it’s a person-by-person decision. “As someone who works with bees, and has talked with people over the years, it comes down to the person making the choice,” says Brooks. For vegans comfortable eating honey who want to ensure animal welfare, seek out ethical, possibly local beekeepers and ask about (or research) their production practices
And while we’re on the topic of whether bee products are vegan-friendly (or not), propolis, royal jelly, and beeswax are also worth discussing. “Propolis is tree sap or resin that the bees collect to use inside the hive as glue or a way to secure things. It's not something that is made directly from bees. It's more of a resource they gather and use within the hive, making it a grey area for vegans (like honey),” Brooks shares.
On the other hand, royal jelly and beeswax are more obvious no-go’s for vegans. “Royal jelly comes from a developing gland in nurse bees and they feed it to larvae for only a few days during the larval stage. If they are trying to develop a queen, she is fed it the entire larval stage,” says Brooks. Meanwhile, beeswax also comes directly from the bee. “To make wax requires a lot of honey. It takes about six pounds of honey to produce one pound of wax,” Brooks adds.
Vegan Honey Alternatives
Regardless of where you stand on whether or not honey is vegan, there are alternative sweeteners to choose from if you’d like to avoid this bee product—that aren’t refined white cane added sugar.
These include agave nectar, maple syrup, molasses, date syrup, coconut nectar or sugar, golden syrup, rice syrup, and barley malt syrup. Alternatively, a slew of vegan honey brands are available, including Blenditup’s Organic Vegan Honey made from apples; these offer a more honey-like flavour compared to the other substitutes listed here.
While the question of whether honey is vegan isn’t straightforward, there are reasonable arguments on both sides that individuals must ultimately weigh for themselves. Those who choose to consume honey can support bee and ecosystem health by seeking out small-scale beekeepers who prioritize ethical practices.
https://www.realsimple.com/is-honey-really-vegan-a-beekeeper-explains-11968639
No comments:
Post a Comment