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Beet Pulp and it’s Effects on the Horse
Hi there! I have come across many horse owners feeding beet pulp to their senior horses as part of their feed regimen. I remember listening to one of your podcasts (I dont remember which) where you said beet pulp is the byproduct of the sugar beet and thus has no nutritional benefits. Then I read in this article on beet pulp stating: “Some horse owners believe sugar beet pulp is high in sugar when it’s not. Beet pulp is what’s left after the sugar has been removed and what’s left is a highly digestible form of complex carbs that form a good calorie source.” Is this not true? It’s just hard to educate people when they can Google it and find all this information contradicting what I’ve said and no info supporting the advice that I’ve given.
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1 Reply
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Thanks for this question. I need to clarify my thoughts.
Sugar beet pulp (SBP) is the byproduct of the sugar beet industry; the remains of sugar beet processing after removing the sugar (the 2nd leading source of sugar for humans behind sugar cane). This pulp is mostly fiber used as food for the hindgut bacteria (a prebiotic). Another expression used with sugar beet pulp is “high glycemic index,” meaning it is not used as simple sugar in the small intestine and therefore does not raise insulin as high as a simple sugar.
The word “calorie” has a fluid-like meaning. Due to the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, a calorie that goes into the body will equal a calorie used for creating energy. Therefore, all animals will lose weight when there are not enough calories ingested to meet their daily needs of the animal. Here is where the complication occurs. All animals keep a reserve supply of fuel known as normal body fat. Body fat converts into a fuel (free fatty acids, triglycerides, ketones) used when little food is available.
As long as horses eat more calories than are needed, their fat reserves will never be accessed. SBP is not high in free sugars or bound glucose in starch; however, this article’s “digestible complex carbohydrates” will still add calories to the system by becoming glucose or a short-chain fatty acid. Therefore adding SBP will still add body fat to any horse that already has body fat and has access to pasture, hay and the grains in the senior feeds.
There are two more points I would like to make here and both of them are theoretical. The first point is that no horse through evolution ever had exposure to sugar beet pulp. It is a manufactured waste product (not a primary) foreign to all horses. The second point is that the hulls of most plant seeds have lectins (plant defense proteins) that may inflame the gut wall. Or the pulp may have other inflammatory proteins foreign to the horse and its bacteria. Either way, someone needs to show me that feeding this waste product continually throughout the year benefits horses over the typical ground plants they evolved to eat.
More information about SBP is at these websites:
If you want to add body fat (senior, poor teeth, etc), then adding SBP may help. However, no one has demonstrated that the use of SBP has no ill effects long-term – and most horses are already overweight.
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