While at the checkout line today at the A Market (the local health food store) I suddenly realized I was very hungry. I guess the owners of A Market had anticipated this hunger in their customers, for they had placed a rack of cookies conveniently next to the counter. I succumbed to my impulse buying and snatched one up. To my initial horror, I discovered that it was a vegan cookie and did not contain lots of ingredients that I've come to expect in my cookies. It did have wheat in it, so I bought it, deciding i could tolerate the nondairy bit. Oh, and it did have sugar, too.
Anyway, I noticed that the wrapper proudly stated that it contained no honey. This struck me as odd. A shred of knowledge from my beekeeping days asserted itself in my brain. I remembered reading that vegans disapproved of beekeeping because the bees were "in captivity." ARgh. I expressed to Aaron my annoyance with vegans not eating honey and wondered out loud why they wouldn't, seeing the premise I had heard was ridiculous.
"It's because it's an animal product," came a voice from behind me. The speaker was a blonde Californiaish (not a compliment)fellow who works at A Market. he went on to explain to me a bunch of stuff that I already knew, like the fact that vegans won't wear wool. I opened my mouth to explain to him that honey isn't a product from the bee's body like wool, and that bees can no longer live in the wild because of parasites that have developed over the years. But before I could explain that he had walked off leaving me seething at his rather arrogant tone. sigh. I'll just have to tell him next time...
I can understand, no, not understand, respect people's decisions to be vegan for ethical decisions, but until I either feel that adopting a vegan diet will improve my health or that animals have more rights than people, I will continue to put honey on my pancakes, drink milk, wear sweaters, and eat hamburgers!
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9 comments:
Go Bria! I miss the A Market.
Mmmm... I like honey! :)
There are definitely some strange ducks out there.
Down with militant Vegans! I shall never give up hamburgers, period...
Go, Sojourning!
I'm sure you're a very nice Californian. :-) I was referring to the beach-blonde-board-shorts-vegan-look-at-me-i'm-god's-gift-to-women sort of Californian dude, not the "normal" ones.
However, as a New England girl, I still hold to the old saying about how when the US was turned on its side everything not nailed down fell into California!
Excuse me! I eat vegan, so I'm highly insulted. And coming from my own cousin! We may just have a family split over this...me, Aaron and Loralee will take the rest of you on.
Oh, wait. Did I say I eat vegan? I meant I eat vegans.
Hey, Craig, make sure you specify Aaron REYES when you talk about your family member Aaron helping you defend Vegans. Some people might get the wrong idea.
Boycotting bees? What next?!
Sojournings comment about how we've trained bees to do our make honey at our bidding made me chuckle as a mental image of bees in a hypnosis-brainwashing session stole over my consciousness. "Make honey...make honey...make honey..."
I thought Californians were a little loopy too- and then I met Brad...and was even more convinced!!! Heh heh...just kidding. Quite the opposite in fact.
Laughing!
I have two Californian sisters, and they are both exceptionally good eggs.
What I want to know is: who taught bees how to sting?
Lisa
Obviously, the stinging mechanism was developed as a defense against greedy humans who attempted to program honeymaking bees for their own selfish ends. Which goes to show how evil it is for people to swipe honey from the poor bees and claim there's nothing wrong with it. There, how's that for the vegan response?
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