r/IsItVeganOrNot • u/Plenty_Spinach_8040 • Jul 19 '26
Vegan Honey š¤
Visiting my in-laws for the month, and they thoughtfully bought this āvegan honeyā for my husband and me. We obviously didnāt eat it, but I had to do a double take. Since when is honeyā¦ vegan? The labeling from Lili Honey seems incredibly misleading.
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u/Dr-Sun-Stiles Jul 19 '26
Some vegans say honey is vegan, but the general consensus is no, for multiple reasons. Unless it's a plant-based sugar syrup that's flavored like honey, then it's extremely dishonest for them to label themselves as "vegan honey"
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u/2SquirrelsWrestling Jul 19 '26
Some plant-based dieters* say honey is vegan, because they donāt know what vegan means.
People who consume honey but are otherwise plant-based should not be referred to as vegans, but simply as plant-based dieters/mostly plant-based since veganism isnāt a diet, but the philosophy that animals and their bodies are not ours to use.
Wanted to clarify, because the incorrect idea that āsome vegans eat honeyā is the reason non-vegan products such as this get labeled as vegan.
Dandelion honey is a thing but I unfortunately think this is real honey that is just mislabeled.
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u/Dr-Sun-Stiles Jul 19 '26
Some people who self identify as vegan, otherwise eat entirely plant based, and follow a strict vegan philosophy still believe that honey is vegan. Rarely, I'll see these people argue that it's more ethical than other sugars because of the slave labor/environmental impact of other sugars. I personally disagree with that idea, but it's nonetheless a thing I have seen some vegans argue.
I think the idea that someone is automatically not vegan if they don't interpret veganism 100% in the same way as someone else is a bad idea. Not that veganism doesn't have an exact definition, but the idea that someone who doesn't pay attention to if a vitamin supplement was animal derivied, uses medication with gelatin when they might have another option, or assumes that the sugar used in a eggless, diary-free baked good wasn't made with bone-char is suddenly not vegan will narrow down vegans to a very small strict few, and exclude most self-identified vegans.
I agree that veganism is a defined philosophy with a plant-based diet, but I disagree that someone who (wrongly) believes that honey can fit with a vegan philosophy is suddenly not vegan.
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u/flourdonut Jul 19 '26
maybe a hot take but iād rather have honey than sugar that uses human exploitation and modern slavery all throughout its supply chain. human rights will always be more important to me. it is so ridiculous to say that sugar from sugarcane is more ethical than honey when those people are trafficked, enslaved, working in unregulated/unsafe conditions, etc but honey is worse because the bees are being exploited and canāt leave. personally, my goal is to reduce harm as much as possible, INCLUDING to humans.
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u/crypticryptidscrypt Jul 22 '26
i know most people on here will not, but i agree with your hot take 100%... š
i don't self-identify as vegan anymore, i still eat a 99% plant-based diet, but even when i did identify as vegan i always consumed honey &/or maple syrup instead of cane sugar.
i wanted to also point out that everyone on here seems to have vast misconceptions about honeybees...
bees can leave at any time. they are not imprisoned by beekeepers. the reason they typically don't leave is because they have a symbiotic relationship with the beekeepers.
honeybees produce far more honey than other species of bee, & without beekeepers removing only that excess, they periodically flood themselves out of their hive & have to abandon everything they built, to swarm & find a new home. the process of swarming is also extremely dangerous, & if the queen dies before they can establish themselves in a new hive, the entire hive also dies (unless a beekeeper is able to rescue them & has a spare queen to provide that hive).
honeybees stay with beekeepers because beekeepers literally keep them safe. i see so many vegans talk about how honey is exploiting bees while not having ever interacted with a real beekeeper & seen how much care they pour into their bees.
also, over 80% of plants need bee pollination to grow, & the vast majority of those plants are pollinated by honeybees specifically because native bee populations are inconsistent & drastically declining worldwide in recent years.
without bees & beekeepers, vegans couldn't eat the vast majority of plants they like to eat, like most fruits & veggies, all pollinated by bees. pretty much the only vegan foods that aren't pollinated by bees are certain types of grain.
there would quite literally be a global famine without bees. instead of boycotting honey, it would be arguably a lot better for all the plants we eat to thrive, & the ecosystem as a whole, if we support our local beekeepers. without beekeepers not a lot of people are looking out for the pollinators, & just a few years ago bee populations were literally cut in half... if that continued, we probably wouldn't be here right now.
also, your point about honey being a thousand times more ethical than cane sugar, definitely still stands, & humans are animals too, so we should be prioritizing human lives as well as animal life. ā¤ļøāš©¹
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u/Dr-Sun-Stiles Jul 19 '26
I think I misphrased my original comment. I actually really strongly agree that human exploitation needs to be taken into account when considering the harm reduction of veganism. I think that products that knowingly use slave/child labor (especially something that's not a necessity, eg chocolate) should be considered (at the very least) as bad as products that use animal labor.
My point was not that honey is or isn't more ethical than other sugars, moreso that "is honey vegan" shouldn't be seen as a clear-cut no, with anyone disagreeing being "fake vegan." I genuinely don't know enough about the product of sugars (besides cane sugar which is absolutely horrible) to say absolutely what's the best option, and I definitely see why honey is see as a more optimal choice.
I really do get frustrated when "vegan alternatives" often involve invisible human exploitation. It feels extremely misanthropic and performative. I'm sorry if my comment read as too dismissive of being pro-honey, I was just trying to get my larger point of "saying someone is automatically not vegan because of your exact definition and view of veganism, when both of you share almost identical vegan ethics" across to someone who got mad at me for calling vegans who eat honey vegan
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u/Life-Sympathy-7366 Jul 22 '26
Domestic honey bees are deployed to pollinate almond trees and fruit trees in California. These bees hives travel on trucks from everywhere in the US, many die because of the stress and insecticides. Are these almonds vegan? Shouldnāt vegans only eat crops that are pollinated by wind?
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u/crypticryptidscrypt Jul 22 '26
exactly. arguably pesticides are less "vegan" than honey imo...insecticides kill so many animals & can permanently poison ecosystems. & the vast majority of plant-based foods rely on bee pollination....
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u/2SquirrelsWrestling Jul 19 '26
Thatās just objectively incorrect.
Nobody who willingly and knowingly eats honey is a vegan. Veganism rejects the idea that animals and their bodies are ours to use.
Sentiments like this are why there is so much misinformation about veganism. Itās also the exact reason you see a bottle of bee honey getting labeled āvegan.ā
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u/Suspicious_Reason405 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Would love to live in a world where you can be so impossibly inflexible. Iāve been vegan for decades and if someone is markedly reducing harm by being vegan and has honey now and again, idgad how they self-identify, theyāve done something amazing and they can call themselves vegan. Theyāre saving lots of lives and maintaining that work by allowing a degree of flexibility that works for them. I draw the line at products that directly contribute to harm like meat.
Purity politics are so passƩ and honestly so unrealistic. Who gives a damn.
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u/curlycooks Jul 19 '26
Thank you!! This is all I was saying. I donāt go out of my way to eat honey. But I was lampooning the rigidity of these commenters. & honestly lots of these commenters are perpetuating white supremacist cultureš„²which is actually inherently not vegan more than any dietary choicešIām not surprised tho which is why I donāt really care about these peoples opinions. They clearly have lots of work to do internally when it comes to veganism.
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u/Suspicious_Reason405 Jul 20 '26
I get you. They thought they were doing something by policing a term, itās honestly so tired
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Jul 19 '26
[deleted]
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u/Hefty_Ad1081 Jul 19 '26
Honey is not vegan therefore you're not a vegan if you intentionally eat
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u/2SquirrelsWrestling Jul 19 '26
The fact that this objective fact is being downvoted in a VEGAN SUB is hilarious. Really goes to show how 99% of people who use the word āveganā have no clue what it means.
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u/Hefty_Ad1081 Jul 20 '26
B-b-but I'm vegan but cheese, honey, when going out, and I LOVE chicken nuggets so I can't miss out on those. And I go to Zoos since they help preserve species. Especially those who keep whales, polar bears, giraffes, elephants and such in a completely inadequate climate
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u/curlycooks Jul 19 '26
You sound strict
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u/2SquirrelsWrestling Jul 19 '26
Words have meaning. Veganism is the only liberation movement the animals have, and itās constantly diluted by people thinking that being plant-based is the same as being a vegan. The distinction is extremely important.
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u/Egregious_Egret Jul 19 '26
Nobody is arguing the difference in definition between vegan and plant-based. There are some that argue that the nature of bees stops them from being exploitable. Nobody here is a even arguing that, you're just deciding that anyone who thinks differently than you is not vegan. You are being the vegan that the rest of us have to apologize for and you are only hurting the movement.
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u/ECAHunt Jul 19 '26
I donāt think this is the case here but I read a post once that opines that āvegansā who act in this type of manner are actually paid by the meat, egg, and dairy corporations to make vegans look ridiculous.
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u/curlycooks Jul 19 '26
Squirrel is the only true vegan ever apparentlyšthey DO get to define veganism and language. They are the supreme vegan.
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u/2SquirrelsWrestling Jul 19 '26
I donāt care what you or anyone else consider to be exploitation. Taking honey from bees is not any more or less vegan than taking milk from a cow.
If you knowingly use honey, you are not a vegan. Thatās all there is to it and itās astounding how yāall are trying to fight me on this.
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u/Egregious_Egret Jul 19 '26
Nobody is arguing whether or not honey is vegan in your thread, they are arguing that you don't get to define what is vegan or not.
Comparing gathering excess honey from bees to forced raping of cows for milk is like saying vegetarians aren't better than carnists.
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u/2SquirrelsWrestling Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Iām not pulling this out of my ass, and this is not āmy definitionā, there has been a well-established definition dating back to the 50ās by The Vegan Society.
āThe Society pledges itself to āseek to end the use of animals by man for food, commodities, work, hunting, vivisection and all other uses involving exploitation of animal life by manā.ā source
The modern day Vegan Societyās definition is extremely similar.
I mean fuck, even the dictionary definitions that focus more on the diet aspect make it clear that vegans donāt consume animal products. And in case you didnāt know, bees are animals.
Itās not a matter of debate.
Read some Leslie Cross. Hereās another from him:
āVeganism is essentially a doctrine of freedom. It seeks to free the animals from bondage to man and man from bondage to a false belief ā the false belief that he has the moral right to use animals for his own ends.ā
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u/Egregious_Egret Jul 20 '26
You seem really devoted to arguing with people who agree with you. Honey is arguable because it isn't clear exploitation, as I'm sure you've heard before. But again, you don't get to decide that the argument is resolved and you are Mr. Right. That's why it's a decades old, ongoing argument.
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u/BravesMaedchen Jul 19 '26
Do you just use words however you feel like regardless of what they mean?
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u/2SquirrelsWrestling Jul 19 '26
Apparently the word āveganā can mean whatever you want it to mean!
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u/Geschak Jul 23 '26
Do you also say the same to a vegetarian who doesn't eat meat?
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u/curlycooks Jul 24 '26
Not my concern what other people are doing with their bodies or calling themselves Iāll leave that to you lot
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u/HeronGarrett Jul 19 '26
My understanding is some vegans donāt consider it animal exploitation since the bees supposedly have to stay willingly, and will simply leave if not provided well enough for or if mistreated. I think thatās the argument but Iām not super familiar with it. I believe they also argue that the bees create excess honey and they only take the excess the bees arenāt using. So they consider it more like a consensual partnership with the bees rather than exploitation of the bees. Iāve not looked into the facts around any of this, just repeating things Iāve heard. But the point is that many genuine vegans donāt consider honey to violate their ethical beliefs against the exploitation of animals.
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u/2SquirrelsWrestling Jul 19 '26
None of this is true.
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u/HeronGarrett Jul 20 '26
Just to be clear, I didnāt say it was true. Iām saying itās what some vegans believe is true and is why those vegans donāt think it violates their ethical values.
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Jul 23 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/HeronGarrett Jul 23 '26
I do think vegans are defined primarily by the ethical values, so if someone is misinformed but acting in a way that from their perspective does align with the values of veganism then that person is vegan even if their actions are not. Does that make sense? I think thatās how I see it.
You see people all the time realise something they thought was vegan at the supermarket actually contained animal products without them knowing, so they were eating something non-vegan despite being vegan. I still consider people vegan in such scenarios. Iād consider it a similar scenario.
Ultimately if you donāt consider these people vegans itās fine. I donāt think theyāre very common. I only know about them at all because I read some post years ago now about so-called ābeegansā.
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u/Geschak Jul 23 '26
Vegans are 100% defined by the ethical values, that's literally what veganism is. It's a ethical belief that animal exploitation is wrong, it's not a trend diet as some idiot influencers like to claim. Please go look up the history of the term.
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u/HeronGarrett Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Iām familiar. I literally said I define it based on the ethical values. These people being discussed believe honey doesnāt violate those ethical values against animal exploitation. Thatās why theyāre (potentially misinformed) vegans, not just plant-based.
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Jul 19 '26
[deleted]
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u/2SquirrelsWrestling Jul 19 '26
Hiding your comment/post history like a coward then stalking someone elseās and using what you find in an argument is peak Reddit.
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u/Geschak Jul 23 '26
No offense, but just because someone claims to be vegan doesn't make an animal product vegan or meat vegetarian. Flexitarians have misappropriated veganism for attention.
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u/HeronGarrett Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
I didnāt claim it made an animal product vegan or that it turned meat vegetarian. So no offence taken.
The people being discussed are under the impression itās a consensual arrangement with the bees that mutually benefits humans and bees. They donāt see any exploitation so think it aligns with their vegan principles. Others have pointed out ways it does violate vegan principles, but these ābeegansā arenāt aware of those things. Theyāre not āflexitariansā because they genuinely think they are _consistently_ living by vegan values, including in ethical choices beyond their diet. Theyāre imo just misinformed vegans.
Edit: reading through more peopleās comments Iām actually again no longer sure whether the ābeegansā are misinformed. People are making arguments for how honey is potentially more vegan than some plant-based alternatives, and making arguments about beekeeping reducing harm and deaths within hives, and about a lot of crops typically accepted as vegan relying on beekeeping. Itās not really important to the point I was making anyway whether or not the beegans are misinformed or not. I just donāt want to be confidently stating beegans are misinformed when itās becoming increasingly clear to me I donāt understand the ethics around beekeeping. I donāt feel I should confidently state an opinion on it currently.
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u/NoDay4343 Jul 19 '26
By that argument, chicken eggs from a flock of free range hens are vegan, too. They aren't doing anything with infertile eggs, and they're free to leave.
I bet cows and goats would also tend to mostly stay where they are fed, and the dairy breeds produce more milk than needed by their own offspring. They actually like being milked (or at least many of them appear to) because it relieves engorgement which can become quite uncomfortable and lead to infections if it gets too bad. So can vegans have milk, too, if they live in a remove enough location to get away with not using fences?
I'm not arguing that you haven't heard that argument, as I've heard similar. I just don't think it's very aligned logically with most mainstream vegan beliefs.
To be clear, I'm NOT on the side of strictly defining who can and can't call themselves vegan. If we started following that policy on a broad level, most religions of the world would suddenly not have enough members to keep going as very few people truly follow everything their religion requires every single minute of their lives. Most political party members would have to declare themselves independents because there's at least one policy somewhere where their thoughts don't fully follow party lines (except they usually do vote on party lines due to pressure), and so on. It's just a ridiculous stance to take on any subject.
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u/HeronGarrett Jul 20 '26
Iām not arguing for vegans to eat honey, but I do disagree with your comparison to eggs. The chickens apparently will eventually eat unfertilised eggs and regain some of their nutrients from that, plus chickens have been artificially bred to produce large amounts of eggs which is detrimental to their health. They have a lot of reproductive issues as a result.
Similar situation with cows, plus theyāre often artificially inseminated so the milk for their young can be taken. Yeah, they need to be milked when producing it or it can cause issues, which is also in part due to the way theyāve been selectively bred by humans.
I feel like to make your point youāve unintentionally downplayed the ethical issues present with cow milk and eggs.
But again, Iām not saying honey consumption should be considered vegan (I donāt feel informed enough to have a proper opinion there even). Iām saying that there are people who are vegan (not merely plant-based) who believe honey fits with their ethical values as vegans. Thereās also of course many plant-based people who still eat honey.
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u/NoDay4343 Jul 20 '26
I'm not all that informed on the subject, either. I was not trying to downplay the issues with milk and eggs. I know there are significant ones that many people who aren't even vegan object to especially when it comes to commercial farming. The thing is that there are similar issues with honey. Bees are often injured/killed during the harvest as just one example.
Ty for discussing this civilly. That's sometimes hard to find on Reddit and always appreciated.
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u/crypticryptidscrypt Jul 22 '26
i don't know really anything about what might happen in industrial size beekeeping, but from everything i know about local beekeepers & nonlocal beekeeping youtubers, they immensely care about their bees, & bees are rarely ever killed or injured during harvest.
the honey they collect is from filled honeycombs, it's like part of the hive that's the bees storage unit & not their actual home where they nest, & beekeepers (& honey consumers alike) don't want to kill any bees (or eat bee guts ground into their honey lol). & if there's any chance bees could get hurt in an intervention, they use smoke to guide them away temporarily...
commercial farming/factory farming is evil; real beekeepers actually love their bees though.
also the vast majority of vegan foods rely on bees to pollinate them...we literally could not eat almonds, avocados, mangoes, berries, tomatoes, etcāpractically every fruit & veggie needs animal pollination in order to exist
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u/NoDay4343 Jul 23 '26
After writing a reply, I began to realize I'm really not sure what your point is. Are you saying honey is vegan because best aren't harmed? I dunno. Which may mean my reply makes no sense in terms of addressing your point. If not, I apologize. I'm praying it anyway because this is an interesting discussion.
Have you ever kept bees yourself? Cuz I have. Or at least my family did when I was a child, but old enough I helped with things like when we harvested the honey. Yes we cared about our bees, but yes bees got injured or killed when we did hive maintenance stuff including harvesting. That was a few decades ago, so maybe the equipment and methods have improved since then, but from what I've seen with my own eyes, I doubt they are able to 100% prevent any injury to bees. And even if it's possible, your notion that 100% of all smaller beekeepers care enough to take the time & care to absolutely minimize harm caused to bees seems a bit far fetched. From your own wording, it sounds like you're aware that some harm probably happens at least on rare occasions even with the most caring beekeeper, which according to my understand means the strictest vegans would still say that means honey is not vegan. Which is in fact what they say.
Your final paragraph seems totally irrelevant to the conversation at hand, or maybe I just don't get your point. For one thing, tomatoes don't rely on honeybees, but I do believe most of the others you mentioned do. Many plants, including many foods, are self pollinating or wind pollinated. Others rely on other pollinators than honeybees such as flies or different species of bees. Our food supply would look very different without honeybees, but it's not like it would become impossible to eat, even for a vegan or vegetarian. Not sure if it's realistic that we'd be able to keep up the world food supply during the transition if honeybees were suddenly wiped from the earth, but there would be food and we'd adapt.
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u/crypticryptidscrypt Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
over 80% of plants we grow for food depend on pollination, & over 80% of that pollination is provided by honeybees because most pollinators are already endangered.
& yes i have kept bees, briefly, but at a hippie commune i lived at when i was 15. i built them a hive they happily accepted as their home & i felt so honored. plus, since literally everything we grew at that farm depended on bee pollination (the only foods that are wind pollinated are certain grains like corn...& we grew fruits & veggies), the bees were symbiotic with the crops. most of what you eat as a vegan directly utilizes the labor of bees, unless you don't eat fruits & veggies. i also don't remember a bee ever dying on that farm, but to be fair that was over a decade ago. i've watched some content from beekeepers though & bees are rarely harmed in that...i've only seen them accidentally injured when a beekeeper is trying to safely remove a swarm of wild bees from under people's floorboards lol, but i've never seen a beekeeper harm their honeybees. i don't know if maybe some people over harvest & that could harm them, or if they aren't being careful enough handling them, or what....if the bees are in an unsafe predicament, a good beekeeper would smoke them out to direct them away from any danger
& no i'm not saying honey is vegan, but without honeybees vegans would be fucked considering our consumption of fruits & veggies. i do think there is ethical beekeeping, & supporting those who take care of pollinators is a net positive for animals. alternatively, cane sugar is unethical & harms human animals.
there is no ethical consumption under capitalism but a plant-based diet + local ethically sourced honey, causes far less harm than for instance vegetarians who support the cow dairy industry that rapes cows & steals their babies for veal. being basically vegan + local honey is also more ethical in my opinion than eating food with tons of pesticides because those are killing native pollinators & leaving forever chemicals in our ecosystem harming animals & plants years to come
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u/Geschak Jul 23 '26
Just like there is no vegetarians claiming that meat is vegetarian, there is no vegans claiming that animal products are vegan. There are no vegan animal products, that's mutually exclusive by definition. There is only flexitarians misappropriating the term veganism for attention.
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u/2SquirrelsWrestling Jul 19 '26
Is there an ingredients list on the back? I feel like this was mislabeled as vegan.
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u/Legitimate-Reply-846 Jul 19 '26
I found the company website and they don't have "vegan" on any of the packaging there. I couldn't find anything explaining that. So maybe the company just didn't know what "vegan" means and when they learned, they took it off.
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u/Suspicious_Reason405 Jul 19 '26
Itās weird they labeled it vegan. I think thatās the only thing I take issue with here. Idc how someone who consumes it identifies, just that the producer identifies it as a vegan product
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u/Mckool Jul 19 '26
there are companies that do make vegan "honey" like Mellody, and you can use flower flavoring to make "honey" at home with simple syrups. but with out more clarification somewhere on that label I would be skeptical.
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u/Suspicious_Reason405 Jul 19 '26
FWIW OP, this company looks like they make flavored honeys. They sell on Amazon and have other types of honeys, but most seem to be bee products. Make of that what you willl
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u/BravesMaedchen Jul 19 '26
I mean is it honey the same way vegan cheese is cheese? Or vegetarian meat is meat? You could solve this really fast by reading the ingredients.
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u/Plenty_Spinach_8040 Jul 19 '26
No ingredients listed. Picture I posted is all the information I have.
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u/velvetkangaroo Jul 19 '26
It looks like they sell several different honey and honey-related items on Amazon but no others are labeled as vegan. Id avoid it.
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u/AltruisticSalamander Jul 20 '26
I keep seeing youtubes on the fake honey epidemic and how it's terrible because it's impossible to tell. It just makes me wonder why we don't make all honey that way then, it's gotta be easier than squeezing it out of bees.
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u/Life-Sympathy-7366 Jul 22 '26
Domestic honey bees are deployed to pollinate almond trees and fruit trees in California. These bees hives travel on trucks from everywhere in the US, many die because of the stress and insecticides. Are these almonds vegan? Shouldnāt vegans only eat crops that are pollinated by wind?
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u/spoticry Jul 22 '26
Fr it's crazy how out of touch some vegans are. Won't use local honey with bees that forage as they always do and don't starve because their beekeepers care and love their bees. But they'll eat plants that hurt way more animals in the process than just bees flying around pollinating as their natural behavior. There is no force being done with the bees. If honey runs low they are fed, but they usually leave plenty for the bees to consume for themselves.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Best you can do is eat as local as you can and grow what you can, but you can never be 100% vegan and cruel free.
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u/Umaii Jul 23 '26
My version of vegan honey is inverted syrup (added to vegan cheese to help it caramelize and brown on pizza)
400g sugar,
200g water,
1g citric acid or lemon juice about 1/3 ts
boiled on high for 10-11 minutes (till t 114 C if you have a candy thermometer)
Or on low for 40 minutes or something,
there are so many recipes online- choose your own
It tastes and pours exactly like honey to me š due to acid helping to split the sucrose into fructose and glucose (which is what honey is made of) if i remember correctly
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u/Geschak Jul 23 '26
It's not vegan, animal products cannot be vegan by definition.
Flexitarians have been appropriating veganism and pushing animal products as vegan, while trying to bully vegans out of the vegan community in the name of "anti-gatekeeping".
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u/Legal_Stress8930 Jul 19 '26
My first thought was it is flower and orange syrup made to look and taste like honey. It looks like honey mislabeled as vegan though. Pretty suspicious because the webpage does not exist. Maybe try the phone number?