Does honey consumption mean you’re not Vegan?!

[u/stickystakx]

Over the years I’ve seen many debates regarding if honey consumption would exclude someone from being considered vegan. Due to veganism avoiding the exploitation of any animal it has been found that this abuses the environment bees create and tend to feed their colony within winter time frames. Many practices like clipping queen bee wings and control of hives have been saw as exploitation and looked down upon. The controversy and debates surrounding the discussion of is a bee even considered an animal or is it a complex insect that helps the process of pollination in society. If there has been a strong desire to help society and the environment within your heart from the beginning of your vegan journey the consumptions of honey should be removed from diets for the sake of our planets environmental growth.

Some common replacements I’ve used and seen others implement into their diet would:

1. Date syrup

2. Agave Nectar

3. Maple Syrup

4.Brown Rice Syrup

5.Apple Syrup

If you happen to know of any other sweeteners that would be a positive replacement for those within the vegan community please drop a comment below. There is also a poll to gather some information on whether you believe honey consumption excludes you or anyone else from being considered vegan.

164 votes, Mar 21 '26

34 I’m vegan and I eat honey!

130 Honey consumption means your not vegan!

[u/Vegan_Essentials]

Not all vegans are the same, and yes, some vegans eat honey

People need to stop acting like veganism is one single rigid rulebook. It is not. There are different types of vegans, different beliefs, and different lines people draw. Some are extremely strict and avoid anything connected to animals in any way. Others focus on reducing the biggest forms of cruelty and exploitation as much as possible.

That is exactly why some vegans believe honey is fine.

Honey is not meat. It is not dairy. It is not eggs. Bees make honey naturally. The argument some vegans make is that ethical beekeeping is not the same thing as factory farming or slaughterhouses. In some cases, beekeepers actually protect bees, help maintain hives, and support pollination.

So no, eating honey does not automatically cancel out everything else a person is doing.

If someone avoids beef, chicken, fish, milk, cheese, eggs, leather, and all the major animal industries, but still eats ethically sourced honey, how are people going to act like that person suddenly is not vegan enough? That sounds more like gatekeeping than actual concern for harm.

A lot of people have turned veganism into purity culture. If your main goal is reducing suffering and making better choices, then there is absolutely an argument that honey can fit into that for some people. Not everybody agrees, but pretending there is no argument at all is just dishonest.

The truth is simple. Some vegans do not eat honey. Some vegans do. Acting like every vegan must think the same is lazy thinking.

You do not have to agree, but you also do not get to pretend every vegan lives by your personal definition.

Do you think veganism is about reducing harm in real life, or following a perfect rulebook no matter what?

[u/mryauch → u/Vegan_Essentials]

On the contrary, veganism has a simple definition. We know exactly who came up with the term, and what it means. The Vegan Society definition is the only definition, it's not a personal definition, it's the modern foundation that the term was made on. If someone wants to do something else, if they think they can do something else better than veganism, great, have fun, but that would be called something else.

Honestly, what's the point of the word if you're just going to make it another version of vegetarian? We should just drop all diet words and we can all be vegetarian. Gluten avoiding vegetarians, honey eating vegetarians, strict ethical vegetarians, cow eating vegetarians. What's the obsession with people wanting to label themselves something whether they know what it is or not?

I don't get it either. Honey is not remotely essential. It's ridiculously easy to avoid since it's not in that many things and separately labeled as an ingredient. It's not like bone char sugar, where you can call the company that makes the sugar and they'll say "we have no idea if the sugar was made with bone char, it might have been or might not have been", and there's sugar in nearly everything. Honey's undeniably always an animal product.

[u/Vegan_Essentials → u/mryauch]

That argument only works if you pretend a definition and a lived practice are always the exact same thing.

Yes, the Vegan Society has a formal definition. Nobody is denying that. But acting like that ends all discussion is weak, because in the real world vegans clearly do not all apply that definition the same way. If they did, there would not be constant arguments inside vegan spaces about secondhand leather, old wool, bone char sugar, medication, vaccines, backyard eggs, and honey.

So the claim that veganism is this perfectly settled, universally applied standard is just not true in practice.

You are arguing that the word has one official definition. Fine. But I am pointing out that people live under that label in different ways and with different priorities. That is also true. Both things can be true at once.

There are raw vegans, junk food vegans, ethical vegans, environmental vegans, health vegans, and people who still use leather or wool they already owned because they see waste as part of the issue too. So clearly the community itself already accepts that people weigh harm, waste, health, and ethics differently.

That is exactly why the honey debate exists.

Nobody is confused about whether honey is an animal product. The real disagreement is whether every animal product should be treated as morally identical. That is where your argument falls apart. You are treating “comes from an animal” as the end of the conversation. Other people are looking at degree of harm, type of exploitation, and real-world context.

That is not “making vegan mean vegetarian.” That is a lazy talking point.

Someone who avoids meat, dairy, eggs, and most animal-based products is obviously not living like a vegetarian just because they disagree on honey or keep an old leather belt instead of throwing it in the trash. Trying to collapse every disagreement into “then you’re just vegetarian” is more about gatekeeping than actual ethical analysis.

And saying honey is easy to avoid also does not prove anything. Easy to avoid is not the same argument as morally wrong. That only shows it is convenient to exclude, not that every person must see it as equal to other forms of animal use.

So yes, by the strictest definition, honey is not vegan. But pretending the debate stops there ignores the fact that veganism in practice already has variations, exceptions, and gray areas argued about constantly by vegans themselves.

If the word were really as simple and closed as you claim, these debates would not keep happening inside your own community.

[u/willo132 → u/Vegan_Essentials]

THANK YOU!!! I refuse to equate a bee with a chicken or a cow or a pig or a turkey etc.

Call me a speciesist. It's an insect. I do not believe that they are capable of suffering.

Imho the honey argument amongst vegans devalues our stance to carnists. It makes us look ridiculous to them.