[Pat Ness]

Just wondering if any of you know of any feeds that use artificial sweeteners to replace molasses and make the sugar content lower in their feed?

I know of a local company doing this and since I am not an advocate of artificial sweeteners for myself, I have a hard time thinking this is good for our horses, etc that we are feeding.

Thoughts and opinions welcome.

[caballus]

IMO ... (remember those of you who love to dis what I reply - opinions are neither right nor wrong!) -- artificial sweeteners are nasty, nasty things. I would not feed my animals such things in as much as I don't ever touch them. Prefer to go the more 'natural' route.

[sdlbredfan]

Is that just a local company with its own brand, or is this a new national brand they are trying out? The truly artificial sweeteners such as Aspartame, Sucralose, etc are to be avoided. If the sweetener in question is Stevia, that is a benign, natural sweetener much sweeter than sugar. The biggest red flag to me is why they are sweetening it at all, as that implies to me they may be trying to mask the flavor of rancid or old, spoiled ingredients. Most of the time, the molasses used in other than really icky sticky sweet feeds is partially to keep dust down, and partially to make any mineral pellets stick to the other grains.

[Pat Ness]

Local company and I am not sure which sweetener they are using, but I did ask the person that was using it and she has not gotten back to me.

[deltawave]

I'm not convinced there's anything "nasty" about artificial sweeteners, and they certainly have their place in our addicted-to-sweet-things world, but I'm not altogether convinced horses "need" them, either. What is the purpose? To make food more palatable? I've never had a horse refuse to eat anything, ever, that resembled horse food.

I'd also wonder if horses perceive "sweetness" exactly the same way we do, and if artificial sweeteners hit the same nerve endings. I know horses find things appealing that I certainly would not, and vice versa--who's to say if they'd even like the stuff?

[fivehorses]

I am not a fan of anything artificial...
Poulin came out recently with a banana flavored hay pellet. My horses loved it(as they do most everything). Problem for me is it had 'sweetner' listed as one of the ingredients.

even though they were doing a promo and cheap price, I didn't buy it. I want to know what the sweetner is, please.

I hate how most supplements are artifically flavored and colored...like my horses really care about the color.

[apcohrs]

I also dont buy artificial sweetener, but it is probably a natural sweetener.

This kind of ingredient list allows them to buy whatever sweetener is cheapest as the market fluctuates.
It would be nice if they listed all of the possibilities.

[SonnysMom]

dw- my QH is HYPP and we tried to switch him to plain oats. He wouldn't touch them. He is picky about his food. We eventually gave up. If we mixed just a little sweet feed in with them he would eat it. (I use the term sweet feed loosely here) It was a really dry sweet feed with only a little dry molasses. It was only .4% potassium.
There are horses that won't eat plain grain.