So, is manuka honey vegan? Can Vegans Eat Manuka Honey? The exact answer is NO. As we all know, vegans stay away from all animal-sourced foods and only consume plant-based products.
But how about honey? The answer to this question is dependable, as honey indeed is made from bees, but it is also not made from bees.
What Is Manuka Honey and The Process of Making it?
The honey-making process raises a lot of controversy for the question, “Can vegans eat Manuka honey?” because both animals and plants are essential in this process.
To be more specific, worker bees will collect nectar from manuka plants and swallow it. When going back to the hive, worker bees will hand over the nectar to younger bees.
The younger bees then digest the nectar and regurgitate honey to the honeycomb. Following that, the bees close each honeycomb cell with beeswax to store their honey as food in the future.
Besides the great sweet taste, what makes manuka honey so popular is its infectious treating ability. Since the 19th century, people have found manuka honey as a natural antibacterial product.
How Good Is Manuka Honey?
Manuka honey contains the Methylglyoxal compound, which is one of the most powerful antibacterial substances. Hence, you can use it to treat your body both insides and outsides.
If you have hair problems, a bit of manuka honey is great support. In case of skin problems or injuries and wounds, manuka honey will work well as an antibacterial treatment.
Eating manuka honey will also help prevent your digestive problem. Moreover, a spoon of manuka honey will make your sore throat go away immediately with a very delicious taste.
Why Don’t Some Vegans Eat Honey?
Despite the benefit of manuka honey, some vegans consider the honey-making process a form of the bees’ exploitation. Since natural honey is minor and the demand is growing, it mostly comes from commercial bee farms.
The farms breed the bees and set up the beehive to extract their honey for sale. Even though some beekeepers said that they always take a reasonable amount of honey and leave enough for the bees, they possibly take away all the honey from the bees and replace it with sugar water for more profit. Besides, sugar water is not nutritious as pure honey and could be harmful to the bees.
Many factors even kill the bees at the farm. While wild bees could choose safe and supportive places to build their hives, bee farms place hives to harvest easily.
More about the honey harvesting method, smoking the hive is the most common one. But this method is inhuman as it could kill the bees and affect the condition of the beehives.
Top 5 Vegan Honey Substitutes For You
If you don’t want to use manuka honey, there are still many choices of vegan honey substitutes for you.
The substitutes are not the same as honey, but their taste and texture will satisfy your honey-craving. We will introduce to you five tasty vegan honey substitutes:
#1. Maple syrup
Maple syrup is a popular sweetness made from maple trees. The smooth syrup contains about 24 types of antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals.
#2. Blackstrap molasses
The second substitute is blackstrap molasses. In detail, it is made from boiling sugar cane juice into a thick and brown liquid. Molasses is also great in baking cookies, and it contains calcium and iron.
#3. Barley malt syrup
The barley syrup-making process is quite similar to the molasses-making process, except for the color. Specifically, barley malt syrup has a golden and glossy delicious look.
#4. Brown rice syrup
Another plant-based honey you should try is brown rice syrup. This syrup is the result of the melting brown rice process. The enzymes will help break rice starch and convert it into dark syrup.
#5. Agave syrup
The last honey substitute with variant flavors is agave syrup. The process of making agave syrup from an agave plant is similar to maple syrup.
In short,
After reading this post, what is your opinion about can vegans eat Manuka honey?
So, is manuka honey vegan? As mentioned above, honey is natural sweetness from plants and good for your health. But the honey-making process still involves bees, a kind of animal.
So, eating manuka honey or not will depend on vegans’ awareness and point of view.
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