What's wrong with eating honey?

[True2marie]

One of my best friend's father is a vegan. He warned us both about eating certain types of foods. Of course, Red Dye #40 was on the list and, to my surprise, so was honey.

What's wrong with eating honey?

 

[thomas pendrake]

Honey frequently contains clostridium botulnum, the bacterium responsible for botulism, a deadly food poison. do not feed un-pasteurized honey to infants. Some honey may be contaminated with agricultural chemicals. Try to be careful of the type of honey you consume. Organc would be a safer choice Bees are needed to pollinate many plants in order to produce most of the food that vegans eat. Some people feel that helping bees to help us eat is exploiting them. If you object to that, don't eat any foods that are pollinated by bees. Or just eat wild foods that you gather in the wild. Try locusts and wild honey. Being vegetarian does not mean that you have to be stupid. That is something you can do in any group. Hitler and Ghandi were both vegetarians. Einstein and Stalin weren't.

 

[clairebeautiful]

^^This. It is also the reason pregnant women are advised against eating raw honey. The chance of ingesting the rare bacteria is there, so why risk it, you know? The idea is that full grown and healthy adults would be able to fight it and be okay, probably without long-term nor lasting effects, but infants, and a fetus, would not be strong nor big enough to fight it.

Store bought honey, my understanding anyway, the non-natural stuff, but the processed stuff, is considered okay.

 

[rosacrux]

By definition, honey is not vegan, as it is the result of exploiting bees to produce it. So, following vegan views, it is unethical to eat honey.

 

[thomas pendrake]

All of the sites I have consulted say that Honey is debated among vegans.I personally wonder how ethical it would be to kill of most of the world's bees and reduce the world's food supply by about 90%. Do you eat oranges? How about strawberries? Virtually any type of berry? How about squash? Domesticated bees have ensured swarm survival by adapting to co-existing with humans.

 

[Sandra Piddock]

Okay, maybe it's exploiting bees - according to some, but not to me - but what would they do if they weren't pollinating things? Sometimes the food police can get a bit too enthusiastic, methinks. Here in Spain, we buy organic honey produced by the orange growers. The taste is wonderful, and it's much cheaper than you'd think. A large jar costs 5 Euro (about £4) and it lasts for months.

 

[thomas pendrake]

Orange blossom honey is my favorite and is easy to get here in Florida. It is bizarre to me that some people want to belittle other people over what they eat and yet are very illogical about their reasons for their diet. all primates are omnivores and are basically predators. Our eyes are not on the side of our faces. That is because we, like all primates, are hunters. If we quit eating beef do we kill off all the cows? I had a friend who was a Brahmin Hindu and he had no problem with the fact that I ate meat. My ex-wife thought I was stupid because I didn't like exactly the same foods she did. She usually told me so in front of other people. Ex.

 

[OhioTom76]

There are other alternatives for sweeteners, but I've always been told that honey was the healthiest since it provided nutrients. Also it helps fight colds. I don't really see farming bees in the same way as the inhumane methods used to raise chickens. If anything. They're probably having a blast forming nests that big!

 

[megshoe]

A lot of vegans don't eat honey simply because it is an animal by-product, in the same way they do not eat dairy products. There may be other reasons for this, as other posters outlined above. I know it's definitely ill-advised to feed honey to infants because their bodies haven't yet built up a strong enough immune system to handle such an introduction of bacteria. There's nothing wrong with eating honey otherwise, except for the sugar content. Contrary to what some may think, honey isn't any better than traditional sugar...Your body will process it the same way.

 

[Sandman]

Honey is good for many things! I really enjoy eating it but in small doses, you can even mix it with peanut butter on a sandwhich. Did you know that honey is like the only foodstuff that is pretty much non-perishable.

 

[megshoe]

Did you know that honey is like the only foodstuff that is pretty much non-perishable.

I was absolutely shocked when once, in Japan, I opened a jar of honey I had bough to find the top covered in green mold! I couldn't believe this had happened, especially since I had bought it on a trip from a really nice bee farm. The honey had some sort of peach flavoring in it and I think it was in fact this peach stuff that had separated and molded. Man, was I shocked because I always thought that honey was essentially non-perishable.

 

[thomas pendrake]

Real honey is essentially non-perishable. I laugh when I see sugar free honey in the grocery store.

 

[isabbbela]

Oh wow I had never even heard about honey being bad for your health or containing bacteria. I always heard and thought it was great for your health.... Also, real honey is one of the few things that are said never to go bad. I like honey.

 

[Foodie14]

I can't understand why anyone would suggest not heating honey, especially when we are helping the bees to thrive and help us in return by pollinating our fruits and vegetables. The local beekeepers I know are champions of the food industry by keeping the bee population up, which in turn ensures that we can have regular crops. The bees will produce honey anyway whether we eat it or not, so we might as well eat it as it's filled with nutrients and enzymes that our bodies need - raw honey that is. I wouldn't bother with the processed stuff you find on supermarket shelves as it's often laced with sugar and other things, as well as being devoid of any living enzymes.

 

[imagenscape]

i have never heard that honey was bad for you. No one even warned me when I was pregnant to stay away from honey, though I do not eat a lot of it. My brother puts honey on everything and hes healthy. Its a natural sweetener. There are sometimes he goes a little overboard with the honey though and makes weird things like a honey tuna fish sandwich.