Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I'm a raw vegan and a majority of people give me crepe for eating honey. Technically, it doesn't come from the bee itself and is one of the most enzyme-rich foods ever recorded. But i still add the option of agave to my recipes even though i really dislike agave. I AM still a vegan, honey consumption and all.

Any thoughts on this? Please dont hold back. I want complete honesty.

You aren't a vegan if you eat honey. You can still be a great person, and an ethical/healthy/awesome eater, but honey is an animal product, and vegans don't eat animal products (including honey). Period.

On the enzyme thing:

A) once you ate it the stomach acid would denature the protein, thus destroying any enzyme-function. So the only benefit would be as a source of protein.

B) A quick google search says honey has about 0.5% protein, so you are better of with basically anything else if you are looking for protein.

So, I call bullshiitake (NV!) on the health claim.

Source: Me, PhD in protein chemistry.

eat whatever you want. just don't ask what people on a message board think about it.

We just had this thread.
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=14455

That was "Honey- how to explain to omnis why we don't eat it?", this is "Honey- how to explain to vegans why we do eat it?"

Isa, that thread is like three weeks old. It's stale. The (vegan, not honey-infused) milk's gone sour.

Okay, do we need extra enzymes? DDA, explain this to me!

It can't be stale! Honey doesn't go bad.

This. I've learned that the best thing is to eat what you feel you should, avoid what you shouldn't, learn about what you eat, and move on. If you were to ask an omni or vegetarian, they would not care what you do with your honey. Eat if if you want, enjoy it, but folks on a vegan board aren't going to condone it.

Yes, dear?

Do I need to come up with more ridiculous stories in an attempt to keep this honey thing from getting too pointed? Because I will! I can accuse bees of ANYTHING! Bees stole my toy car in third grade! Bees let the air out of my tires when I was at a Robyn Hitchcock concert! Bees ate my dad! Bees sank the Titanic! I COULD GO ON.

You don't need extra enzymes! Your body will make all the enzymes you need from the protein you eat.

I don't understand why you say honey doesn't actually come from bees.

Fun fact: Bees communicate by dancing. They are cute.

Bee farming is a prerequisite to almost all farming and honey is, to some extent, a by-product of this. Out of milk, eggs and honey, honey is the one that I'm not really that bothered about. I don't buy honey, but I don't go out of my way to avoid it.

Locally produced honey can help severe hayfever - fun fact!

Okay, this is going to sound like a kind of snotty question, but do you even know what an enzyme is, or did you just hear somewhere that they're important and that you need to eat extra for some reason? I'm not trying to be a schmuck about it-- I'm genuinely curious about the sources of your information

It seems some of the point of a raw food diet is that by not cooking food you are preserving enzymes that would be broken down by the heat of cooking-- is this what you're talking about?

Regardless, eating enzymes doesn't do you any good since they are digested and used as basic proteins. So, enzyme rich or not, honey just gets digested like everything else.

References:

http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ulti ... 000011;p=0
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRel ... ds/mp.html

...plus there are some other random pages you can find for yourself, but those are the ones that most effectively address ideas about the value of eating enzymes.

There's an interesting piece in the first link about prescription dietary enzymes, which are specially coated so they don't digest. Here's more on that:

http://www.pancan.org/section_facing_pa ... nzymes.php

He was a noble gentleman.

Exactly. In fact, this is the reason you can't just take an insulin pill. Insulin is a peptide hormone, basically chemically identical to an enzyme. You have to go through all the hassle of injecting it to bypass the stomach.

Is that a bee I see buzzing around your avatar???????

Or two.

First they came for your family, next they came for your avatar!

i can't stop checking in here everytime the beeman, i mean solipsistnation, posts. i keep expecting to see a bee-covered corpse. or maybe this.


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Why is it burnt? WHY IS IT BURNT?

agreed