Can vegans eat honey?
Friday, October 3rd, 2008Slate has a look at why vegans can’t decide whether they’re allowed to eat honey. It is, as they say, an old debate.
A fierce doctrinal debate over its status has raged for decades; it turns up on almost every community FAQ and remains so ubiquitous and unresolved that radio host Rachel Maddow proposed to ask celebrity vegan Dennis Kucinich about it during last year’s CNN/YouTube presidential debate. Does honey qualify as a forbidden animal product since it’s made by bees? Or is it OK since the bees don’t seem too put out by making it?
I fall into the it’s OK camp.
What was perhaps more interesting is coming across the term “flexitarian”.
Five years ago, the American Dialect Society honored the word flexitarian for its utility in describing a growing demographic—the “vegetarian who occasionally eats meat.” Now there’s evidence that going flexi is good for the environment and good for your health.
BTW, one can ignore the “dangers of a vegetarian diet” stuff toward the bottom of the article. Sheesh.
