Why Honey Is Vegan
By Michael Greger

http://www.satyamag.com/sept05/greger.html

All the Buzz Without the Bee

What looks like honey, feels like honey, and tastes like honey?
Suzanne’s Specialities’ Just Like Honey Rice Nectar is just like
honey except for one thing—it is bee-free. That’s right. This vegan
“honey” simply astounded the Satya staff. Putting bees out of
business, this sweetener made from brown rice, chicory, and maple
syrups, reigns as the new taste of vegan.

Gluten-free and GMO-free, this nectar is the perfect topping for
pancakes, waffles and oatmeal, and a delightful addition to tea. In
fact, long- time vegan, Roshni Koshy exclaimed that while she’s
typically a coffee drinker, she’s going to switch to drinking tea
just to flavor it with Just Like Honey. It lacks refined sugars and
is still better than any other sweetener. Winnie the Pooh wouldn’t be
able to tell the difference and neither will you. Order online at
www.suzannes-specialties.com. —S.I.
Honey hurts more than just bees. It hurts egg-laying hens, crammed in
battery cages so small they can’t spread their wings. It hurts mother
pigs, languishing for months in steel crates so narrow they can’t
turn around. And the billions of aquatic animals who, pulled from
filthy aquaculture farms, suffocate to death. All because honey hurts
our movement.

It’s happened to me over and over. Someone will ask me why I’m
vegan—it could be a new friend, co-worker, distant family, or a
complete stranger. I know I then have but a tiny window of
opportunity to indelibly convey their first impression of veganism.
I’m either going to open that window for that person, breezing in
fresh ideas and sunlight, or slam it shut as the blinds fall. So I
talk to them of mercy. Of the cats and dogs with whom they’ve shared
their lives. Of birds with a half piece of paper’s worth of space in
which to live and die. Of animals sometimes literally suffering to
death. I used to eat meat too, I tell them. Lots of meat. And I never
knew either.

Slowly but surely the horror dawns on them. You start to see them
struggling internally. How can they pet their dog with one hand and
stab a piece of pig with the other? They love animals, but they eat
animals. Then, just when their conscience seems to be winning out,
they learn that we don’t eat honey. And you can see the conflict
drain away with an almost visible sigh. They finally think they
understand what this whole “vegan” thing is all about. You’re not
vegan because you’re trying to be kind or compassionate—you’re just
crazy! They smile. They point. You almost had me going for a second,
they chuckle. Whew, that was a close one. They almost had to
seriously think about the issues. They may have just been considering
boycotting eggs, arguably the most concentrated form of animal
cruelty, and then the thought hits them that you’re standing up for
insect rights. Maybe they imagine us putting out little thimble-sized
bowls of food for the cockroaches every night.

I’m afraid that our public avoidance of honey is hurting us as a
movement. A certain number of bees are undeniably killed by honey
production, but far more insects are killed, for example, in sugar
production. And if we really cared about bugs we would never again
eat anything either at home or in a restaurant that wasn’t strictly
organically grown—after all, killing bugs is what pesticides do best.
And organic production uses pesticides too (albeit “natural”).
Researchers measure up to approximately 10,000 bugs per square foot
of soil—that’s over 400 million per acre, 250 trillion per square
mile. Even “veganically” grown produce involves the deaths of
countless bugs in lost habitat, tilling, harvesting and
transportation. We probably kill more bugs driving to the grocery
store to get some honey-sweetened product than are killed in the
product’s production.

Our position on honey therefore just doesn’t make any sense, and I
think the general population knows this on an intuitive level.
Veganism for them, then, becomes more about some quasi-religious
personal purity, rather than about stopping animal abuse. No wonder
veganism can seem nonsensical to the average person. We have this
kind of magical thinking; we feel good about ourselves as if we’re
actually helping the animals obsessing about where some trace
ingredient comes from, when in fact it may have the opposite effect.
We may be hurting animals by making veganism seem more like petty
dogmatic self-flagellation.

In my eyes, if we choose to avoid honey, fine. Let’s just not make a
huge production of it and force everybody to do the same if they want
to join the club.

Michael Greger, M.D. is a physician, vegan nutrition specialist, and
author of Carbophobia! The Scary Truth About America’s Low-Carb Craze
(Lantern). For more on the honey question, see Vegan Outreach’s Vegan
Starter Pack Q&A at http://www.veganoutreach.org/starterpack/qa.html