"When you've got ultra-processed food mostly made from commodity crops - wheat, corn, soya, turned into food-like products that bear little resemblance to our evolutionary diet, these addictive, nutrient-depleted foods not only make us sick but drive us to crave more and more more food-like substances, as our body desperately looks for the missing nutrients."

Dr Mark Hyman

So wrote Dr Mark Hyman, Americal physician, NY Times best-selling author, founder and medical director of The UltraWellness Centre. Okay, so he was talking about our human food industry, but he could just as easily have been talking about the equine food industry, because the message is exactly the same. These "food-like" products drive cravings while leaving us nutritionally starved and sick. Although Hyman was referring to human food, the message applies equally to the equine feed industry.

This is a Big Deal. No diet can support health if it’s nutrient-poor. Giving our horses a feedbowl full of donuts is like giving a child a multivitamin with a burger and soda. Yet misinformation, marketing spin, and dubious studies by feed manufacturers muddy the waters.

In theory, science should guide us with integrity, but the reality can be different. Over the years, I’ve noticed feed companies funding studies that align with their agendas, buying endorsements from trusted organisations, and marketing misleading claims. For instance, "molasses-free" beet pulp can still contain up to 7% sugar and harmful pectins, yet it’s still marketed as safe for laminitics.

As consumers, we need to stay vigilant. When evaluating studies or claims:

1. Follow the money – Was the research funded by a credible source or the feed company itself?
2. Dig deeper – Some organisations that sound independent may be fronts for major corporations.
3. Know the study type – Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are robust; observational studies are prone to bias.
4. Look for replication – One sensational study doesn’t outweigh a body of evidence.

Ultimately, the key to a healthy horse is simple: species-appropriate nutrition. A grass-fibre forage feedbowl 'carrier' is all that’s needed for supplements. Shiny feedbags at the agri-merchant often promise more than they deliver, and many contain numerous bulk-fillers and molasses - all harmful to gut health, especially for metabolic or sensitive horses.

Pro-inflammatory feeds fuel harmful gut bacteria, leading to leaky gut and systemic inflammation. It’s not just about what to feed; it’s about knowing what not to feed. Choose wisely to nurture your horse’s health from the inside out. Avoid the junk, know what to look out for, and check the ingredients on your feedbags.

The feedbowl carrier

"Anything that's going on in the digestive tract is influenced by what you put in the digestive tract. You put the wrong petrol in a Ferrari and we know what's going to happen there."

Dr Tom O'Brien, Big Bold Health

Here are the main bulk filler offenders in alphabetical order:

• Apple pectin/pomace – a byproduct of the apple juice industry. Includes fructose and pectins, which trigger lactic-acid bacteria in the hindgut to produce lactic-acid, which leads to the hindgut acidosis/dysbiosis (SIBO)/leaky gut domino effect, so always a risk for lami/colic. It's nothing more than a filler for palatability. And yes, it's confusing because in humans, apple pectin is beneficial for our human microbiomes, because lactic-acid bacteria feature as a prominent microbe in the human microbiome, hence why many human probiotic supplements include different variations of the Lactobacillus live bacteria.

• Beet pulp - a waste product from the sugar industry, and like grass and apple pectin/pomace, beet as a feed contains residual sugar (up to 25%) and it's high in pectins, which create an acidic hindgut by encouraging the lactic acid bacteria to make lactic acid. Beet is also a highly sprayed product (pesticides and herbicides) during the growth period. There's also 'molasses-free' which is lower in sugar but still contains up to 7% residual sugar in the pulp, and still pectin-rich, yet this is still sold for laminitics. Not ideal for our metabolic horses because it tricks the metabolism into thinking sugar is on its way, which causes the body to pump out insulin, the fat storage hormone, which lays down belly fat, leaving the body hungrier and craving even more sugar and starchy carbs. Something that tastes sweet but says it's 'low sugar' may sound like the perfect cure for sugar addiction, but it’s not, because normally, when something sweet is eaten, it’s accompanied by lots of calories but when it’s ‘low sugar’ yet tastes sweet, this confuses the brain. It senses that the taste of sugar without the accompanying calories from glucose and fructose is Wrong, and it tries to correct the imbalance by making the body hungrier. Cue the beginnings of leptin resistance. Not only that, but it also confuses the metabolism so slows it down, so less calories are burned each day. Bottom line - there is no free ride with beet-related ‘low sugar’ or hidden molasses. Beet increases cravings, weight gain, IR and EMS. And it's addictive.

• Calcium carbonate - basically, chalk, which if your horse is ulcerogenic and on acid blockers, they won't be able to absorb this form of calcium. Besides this, our UK forage is already overly high in calcium, yet you’ll still probably see this - or dicalcium carbonate - appear in the ingredients list. Long and short, too much calcium offsets the magnesium ratio, causing our horses to become fizzy like Tigger, but not in a good way.

• Chaff/Chop - not that this is bad, but there are two issues: 1) so many producers insist on 'lightly spraying' with an oil, which is completely unnecessary, and 2) many producers use alfalfa as the forage source, which doesn't suit all horses. A grass forage is what the equine gut is evolved to digest, not a legume forage.

• Anything 'Corn' - it's highly sprayed, high in starch and can lead to increased blood sugar.

• Expelled Linseed – the waste from the 1st pressing of linseed for linseed oil production. What's left is mixed with alcoholic detergents to degrade it, followed by a 2nd pressing, then washed, filtered, mixed with preservatives and sold to the feed industry as a bit of fibre and linseed proteins. It's nothing more than a filler to show some protein value. Why not just add a spoonful of actual micronized linseed?

• Genetically Modified/GM - GM food has high levels of glyphosate residues that alter the microbial community of the gut, which can cause an increase in the bad gut bacteria linked to inflammation, dysbiosis and discomfort, and a decrease in the beneficial bacteria that protect against inflammation, dysbiosis and gastric discomfort. A high proportion of good gut bacteria have been found to be moderately to highly susceptible to being killed off by glyphosate residues.

• Iron & Manganese - many feed companies also add in iron and manganese, neither of which should ever be added to equine feedstuffs as they’re both already way too high in our UK grasslands to near-toxic levels, acting as antagonists which prevent the uptake of the important micronutrients the equine body needs. Hay/soil tests these days show our UK grass is overly high in iron, full of chlorophyll that contains a lot of iron (hence why feeding a hay diet is better), but the good news is that evolution has made horses really good at regulating their iron uptake in the gut, so they’re used to sorting it out. Despite this, iron can’t be excreted; it heads to the liver so we need to be mindful of any extra iron added to the diet as too high levels can be liver-toxic. Note - we don't add any iron into our EquiVita/VitaComplete balancers.

• Mashes - While they may serve a very short-term purpose, mashes aren't the best fuel to feed as by their very nature the composition is dust-like so no digestion occurs; it literally passes straight through the gut like a gruel and out the other end, so there's very little nutrient absorption, if any. Hence if you've got a super-skinny horse, you won't be adding any weight with a mash. See the separate 'Mashes' page for the rest of the story.

• Molasses – a byproduct of sugar beet, renowned for raising blood glucose levels because molasses are pure sugar. And remember – sugar is the best feed for pathogen gut bacteria, so feeding molasses risks a bacterial breeding ground which risks SIBO/dysbiosis. They're also commonly used to bind the dust to make pellets.

• Nutritionally Improved Straw (NIS) - this is straw soaked in caustic soda to soften it for eating. Seriously. I mean seriously - why would anyone knowingly want to feed caustic soda to their horse? And as for feeding straw to a horse, we've got a whole page on that too.

• Oatfeed/Wheatfeed – both by-products, simply fillers that serve no nutritional purpose at all, basically the dusty remains after the nutritional part of the grain has been extracted. To use wheatfeed as an example, it's not ground up whole wheat or wheat bran - it's the milling waste by-product of flour production. It's fragments of the outer skins and particles of the grain, course middlings and fine middlings, the outer husk and hull, and once processed it's used to bind particles together, using chemicals such as lignosulphonate. Now to it's chemical treatment, and on top of the seed receiving an ammonium nitrate fertiliser, wheat grown in the UK receives on average 3 treatments of fungicides, 3 herbicides, 2 growth regulators and 1 insecticide. Wheat grain may then be dusted, sprayed or gassed with pesticides in farm grain stores, followed by another possible dust, gas or spray of pesticides in commercial grain storage. The fabric of the stores may also be sprayed with pesticides. Wheatfeed is primarily the outer parts of the wheat grain that have been in direct contact with these chemical cocktails, and contain concentrated dust, dirt, mould spores and mycotoxins during the milling process, plus weedkiller from desiccation treatments. The legislation governing safe levels of mycotoxins in human food is not applicable for animal feeds – only recommended levels are made and not enforced. Edited 3.11.18 - new data on the health perils of wheat - see our Wheat - the beginning of today's disease-culture page.

• Pea Protein/Soya Protein - the latest buzz-trend. Originally produced as a processed human 'health' product, it's now hit the equine supplement industry as an alleged protein supplement. Yet Sara Keough, an integrative eco-nutritionist and technical advisor to UnderstandingAg, warns that these 'protein powders' are far from healthful. High heat processing and isolation separates proteins from their wholefood form and generates compounds that aren't naturally occurring in food, which can trigger inflammation and immune system reactions - there are genuine concerns about the allergenicity of pea protein. To quote Keough, "Consuming industrially isolated proteins from chemical-laden GMO peas as a staple food is completely unnatural and poses many health risks."

• Pellets – many feeds come in pellet form, or include pellets, which means that unless it’s stated that they’re ‘mechanically pressed’, means they’ll be stuck together with cane molasses to form the pellet.

• Prebiotics, aka Fructo-oligosaccharides/Mannan-oligosaccharides (Updated 2021) - For at least the last decade, if not longer, we’ve thought we’ve been helping the whole digestive process along by feeding yeasts into the feedbowl, alongside prebiotics commonly seen in horse feeds and equine gut supplements, i.e. fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS prebiotic) and mannan-oligosaccharides (MOS prebiotic), to help those commensal biome microbe colonies along. So, a quick explanation - ‘Oligosaccharides’ literally means ‘a few sugars’, with ‘fructo’ and ‘mannan’ indicating where the sugars come from - mannan referring to … yeast. Now cut to 2021 and the current thinking is now about feeding more ‘probiotically’ - provided the appropriate prebiotic diet is fed to our horse (cellulose/hemi-cellulose fibre from stemmy hay), there's no need to feed either a prebiotic or probiotic 'supplement, and that feeding yeasts can actually interfere with the hindgut biome as they're not a recognised colony member. At least that’s what the scientists are saying, so I hope that made sense.

• Rice bran - what no-one tells us is that rice bran is 30% starch residue from rice – oats are 40% – that's a lot of starch so best avoided for our EMS horses. Also, it's treated to synthetic preservatives because it can get rancid, and if you're eco/carbon-neutral minded, it's shipped to us all the way from Asia. We don't need rice bran – there's plenty of other more appropriate feed out there.

• Soya – here’s a product I could write a book on about the perils of its effects, not only on horses health but humans as well - it’s so wrong for horses that it even has its own page here. It's not only plentiful in the horse feed industry but now in processed meat replacements for us human – all made with GMO soy, which is low in nutrients, relies heavily on industrial soil-killing agriculture and chemicals such as glyphosate; it also contains 110 times the amount of glyphosate needed to damage the human microbiome. For our horses, soya bean starch can't be digested by the horse's small intestine which leads to gas build-up; it has the wrong amino acid pattern for horses, leading to water retention in the muscle tissue, not protein-enhanced muscle tissue. It's also rich in long-chain fatty acids containing predominantly polyunsaturated, pro-inflammatory fatty acids. As if this isn't enough to make you want to avoid it, there's the eco/carbon-neutral argument because it's shipped half-way round the world from S.America where the forests are destroyed to make room for GMO soya bean crops.

• Vegetable oils - aka RBDs - refined, bleached and deodorised. You may have been told by your vet to add oil to your horse's feedbowl for 'energy' or 'calories'. You'll also often see various vegetable oils listed as ingredients in your feed, i.e. 'lightly sprayed with xxx oil'. Now here's the rub - these vegetable oils, and especially oil derived from soya bean, are high in PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are naturally high in the unfriendly pro-inflammatory omega-6, while being low in the friendly non-inflammatory omega-3) which, as a result of intense chemical processing are high oxidised, with additives such as bleach, methylcellulose and cultured dextrose derived from laboratory manipulation (there are numerous videos on YouTube). To make matters worse, horses haven’t evolved to digest huge amounts of fat, just the low EFA (essential fatty acid, aka the omegas) content in grass forage. Unlike us humans or dogs, horses don’t have a gall bladder, the primary function of which releases sufficient 'emulsifier', aka ‘bile’ - a bit like our washing-up liquid poured over a pile of greasy pans - to degrade fat to fatty acids, which can then be absorbed through the small intestine so the liver can make body fat. It's the horse's liver which produces a 'trickle' of bile, to match the slow trickle feeding-style of the horse. See our separate page - Oil - for more information.

• Vitamin & Mineral Premix - many compound feeds also tend to have a very low, almost token measure of synthetic vitamins and minerals which don’t come anywhere close to balancing the deficiencies in our UK grazing. Thing is, these nutrients aren’t the real thing - they’re manufactured forms that mimic natural vitamins and minerals, so unless you see the words ‘naturally occurring’, they’re going to be made-in-a-lab synthetic, and they’re definitely synthetic if you see the word ‘premix’. So fake, not real. Just like a spray-on tan. And just for the record, we don't use any synthetic minerals in our EquiVita range.

And finally … all these ingredients, unless stated otherwise, are chemically sprayed during the growth period, usually with a final treatment of chemical mould-inhibitor post-harvest before packaging, to stop the feed getting mouldy. In other words, there’s a cocktail of toxic chemicals included in the feedbag, as well as the majority of the ingredients grown as GMO.