Chaff vs sugar beet

[little_critter]

I currently feed my good doer 12 yo pony Hi-Fi lite and Lite balancer. I'm toying with switching from chaff to sugar beet. I've never fed sugar beet before.
What are the pros and cons of chaff vs sugar beet? (with respect to the horse, I realise there is the faff of soaking sugar beet)
Would sugar beet and balancer be too sloppy and boring?

 

[sjp1]

Sugar beet is generally much more conditioning - because it is sugary and more fattening.

Unless you are talking about feeding speedibeet which has had a lot of the sugar removed.

Sugar beet and chaff would be two totally different feeds - if your pony is a good doer, I wouldn't be feeding sugar beet.

 

[little_critter]

I'd definately be feeding unmollassed sugar beet. From the googling I've just been doing I understand its low in sugar because almost all of the sugar is removed by the sugar manufacturers.

 

[ameeyal]

I wouldn't feed a do gooder sugerbeet if they didn't need it.
Stick with what you have been feeding.

 

[Pasha]

I responded to your post on BD, put also just posted this in the Tack Room in response to Sugar Beet vs Oats, which maybe helpful - taken from the ECIR Yahoo Horse Group:

"A few comments on sugar and beet pulp to hopefully put some the recent
discussions and fears into perspective.

Sugar, in the form of glucose, is absolutely essential to life. There is not a
single cell in the horse's body that does not require glucose. Even the use of
fats, proteins and other "burnable" nutrients for energy absolutely requires
glucose. All the intermediates used in the oxidation of these fuels are
derived from glucose. Any cells grown in a laboratory in the absence of
glucose (or nutrients that the cells can cycle back into glucose) will die.

Every living thing, including every plant, contains sugar. In the plant
kingdom, it is predominantly in the form of sucrose. Sucrose in a sugar
composed of one glucose and one fructose molecule. Only glucose causes an
insulin response. Fructose does not. Fructose is primarily taken up by the
liver, which can utilize it in the manufacture of glucose which is then sent
out to the blood stream in a "timed release" fashion, glucose being released
from the liver only as it is needed to keep blood glucose high enough to
nourish the cells.

Starch is made by stringing together glucose molecules. It does not contain
any fructose. This is why starch is even more potent in terms of an insulin
response than plant sugars. When starch is broken down in the intestine, you
get 100% glucose. Plant sugars yield only 50% glucose. It takes twice as much
plant sugar as starch by weight to generate the same insulin response. On the
basis of their glucose potential, ***a pound of oats, at 60% starch, will
require the same amount of insulin as 20 pounds of 6% sugar beet pulp or 10
pounds of 12% sugar hay***. In fact, the oats will actually end up
requiring/triggering an even higher surge since factors such as rate of
emptying of the stomach and presence of fiber influence how quickly the
glucose in the gut is absorbed.

Everyone, go to

http://ari.calstate.edu/FundedProjects/docs/docs/Glycemic Index Summary%
20Final%20Report.pdf

and look at the glycemic index of common horse feeds. Oats produces 100 times
the glucose rise that beet pulp does. The timothy hay tested produced 32
times more of a rise in blood sugar/glucose than beet pulp. All unmolassed
beet pulp contains 6 to 9%, but rise in blood glucose it produces is almost
undetectable. These findings have been confirmed in other studies as well,
and I've checked it myself. **Even a hay with a similar sugar level, 6 to 9%,
might produce a larger rise in blood sugar than beet pulp does.** This is
because of the high soluble fiber content of beet pulp. E.g.:

J Am Coll Nutr. 1991 Aug;10(4):364-71. Related Articles, Links


Effect of method of administration of psyllium on glycemic response and
carbohydrate digestibility.

Wolever TM, Vuksan V, Eshuis H, Spadafora P, Peterson RD, Chao ES, Storey ML,
Jenkins DJ.

Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of
Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

To determine whether there was any advantage to taking a soluble fiber
supplement separate from food, as opposed to incorporated into a food, we used
psyllium as a model, either taken in water just before a flaked bran cereal
test meal, sprinkled on top of the cereal, or actually incorporated into the
flake. In normal subjects, psyllium reduced the glycemic response when
sprinkled onto or incorporated into the cereal, but not when taken before the
cereal. Varying the amount of psyllium incorporated into the cereal from 0 to
20% resulted in a linear dose-dependent reduction of the glycemic index (GI)
(GI = 101 -2.2 x % psyllium; r = 0.950; p less than 0.002). In subjects with
diabetes, the blood-glucose-lowering effect of the psyllium flake cereal was
similar to that in normal subjects. Mixing psyllium with the cereal or
incorporating it into the cereal reduced the rate of digestion of bran flakes
in vitro but was not associated with increased breath hydrogen levels in vivo
as an index of rapid colonic fermentation. The bran flakes with psyllium
incorporated was rated as no less palatable than the bran flakes cereal alone,
and significantly more palatable (p less than 0.05) than taking psyllium in
water before the cereal or sprinkling psyllium onto the cereal. These studies
confirm earlier reports that viscous fibers must be intimately mixed with the
food to have the effect of reducing blood glucose responses, and that the
mechanism of action relates to a reduced rate of digestion rather than
carbohydrate malabsorption.

Proc Soc Exp Biol Med. 1985 Dec;180(3):422-31. Related Articles, Links


Dietary fiber and the glycemic response.

Jenkins DJ, Jenkins AL.

Addition of purified fiber to carbohydrate test meals has been shown to
flatten the glycemic response in both normal and diabetic volunteers, reduce
the insulin requirement in patients on the artificial pancreas and in the
longer term reduce urinary glucose loss and improve diabetes control. In the
context of high fiber-high carbohydrate diets these findings have had a major
impact in influencing recommendations for the dietary management of diabetes
internationally. The mechanism of action appears in part to be due to the
effect of fiber in slowing absorption rather than by increasing colonic losses
of carbohydrate. Consequently postprandial GIP and insulin levels are reduced
and the more viscous purified fibers (e.g., guar and pectin) appear most
effective.

===============

The goal with controlling insulin resistance is **NOT** to eliminate sugar.
That's virtually impossible. The goal is to limit the intake of sugar to a
level that provides a steady, low supply that the horse can handle.
Fortunately, horses don't seem to have much, if any, problem with
overproduction of sugar by the liver so if you keep the supply of glucose in
the gut low, and glucose uptake slow, while providing the liver with
substrates from the fermentation of fiber that it can use to manufacture
glucose and release it as needed to keep blood sugar normal, we can minimize
the strain on the IR horse and keep weight, blood sugar and insulin in a more
normal range.

There is NOTHING safer to feed your horse than beet pulp. Nothing. If you are
having trouble getting insulin under control, don't decrease your beet pulp,
increase it!"

 

[Nudibranch]

Basically my understanding is this:
Sugar beet (unmolassed of course) is better as a base for balancers than anything else as it is high in calcium. Since magnesium is a big deal these days and can block uptake of calcium, the sugar beet goes best. Now that may be completely wrong! But I am switching back to unmolassed beet because it's always worked really well for my lot. I jumped on the Fast Fibre bandwagon recently but to be honest, my horses aren't that bothered about it and it's a complete PITA to get the consistency right (youngster hates it even a tad too dry while mare hates it too wet). Something like Kwikbeet or Speedibeet takes about five minutes to soak. Dead easy and dead safe. In fact I'm just off to buy some now

ETS, reading the concerns from other posters about sugar, as long as it's unmolassed then it's safe. Managed my Cushings/IR mare oldie using it for many years.