Re: Corn Oil Issues

["Susan Evans Garlinghouse" <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Trish Dutton <trishd@softthought.com>
To: ridecamp@endurance.net <ridecamp@endurance.net>
Cc: suendavid@worldnet.att.net <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>
Date: Friday, February 05, 1999 11:38 AM
Subject: Corn Oil Issues


>Susan (and anyone else who might know!),
>
>I have been having an ongoing discussion with a friend, who, by the way,
>sells a popular line of supplements.


An amazing coincidence.:-)


 Evidently, the supplement company
>thinks that corn oil is evil. I, however, have been having great results
>with it (in conjunction with beet pulp).  She gave me an article from
>one of their newsletters that says - horses do not have gall bladders,
>so oil is absorbed thru lacteal ducts causing fat soluble vitamin
>receptor sites to be blocked and inhibit absorption of vitamins A, D, E,
>and K.

Your friend's company needs to review some physiology.  The article is
correct in that horses (and mules and dolphins, by the way) don't have gall
bladders.  That doesn't mean they don't produce the gastric juices that
emulsify fat, it just means they produce it in a continuous trickle instead
of into a bladder that can then release it in larger amounts in response to
a large amount of ingested fat.

It is true to some extent that alot of ingested fat will to some extent
interfere with the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins.  It doesn't "block"
it per se, but the two fat molecules will compete for the same enzymes and
absorption sites.  If alot of oil is fed at the same time as the fat soluble
vitamins, then it is possible that absorption of some of the fat solble
vitamins is going to be affected.

On the other hand, so what?  It's hardly a problem, and an easy one to fix.
First, let's talk about vitamin D.  Like any other animal, horses
manufacture their own vitamin D when exposed to sunlight.  Significant
vitamin D deficiencies in horses are pretty difficult to produce except in
laboratory conditions in horses kept in a cardboard box and fed newspaper.
So let's not lose too much sleep over vitamin D, at least not in
relationship to feeding fats.

Vitamin K---a healthy microbial population produces vitamin K in the cecum
and colon, so any horse being fed decent forage and is otherwise in good
health doesn't have a vitamin K deficiency.

Vitamins A & E---these are the primary vitamins that could be affected if a
horse is also eating fats, more so if the fats being fed are rancid.  But
let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater here.  The whole idea of
competition between fats depnds on both the fat-soluble vitamin molecule and
the triglyceride moleculess from oil being in the small intenstine at the
same time.  To fix the problem, just don't feed the fats in large quantitiy
all at once.  Most horses don't like it that way, anyway.  Mix it into a
nice big mash of beet pulp (or whatever) so the horse gets a little fat with
each bite over the course of several hours.  If you don't overwhelm the
small intestine with too much fat all at once, they'll absorb and digest it
just fine.  Especially for performance horses, supplementing with a good
vitamin supplement isn't a bad idea anyway, so if you're feeding alot of
fats (ie, more than a cup or so), adding a little more vitamins will take
care of the absorption problem while still getting the benefits of feeding
oil.  Last but not least, if you're really worried about it, feed the
vitamins in a totally different meal than the fats.  Feed your fats in the
morning in a nice big mash and hand out a smaller meal at night with the
vitamin supplement mixed in but no extra fats.  No competition between fats,
no absorption problems.


 Of course, the newsletter goes on to say that we should use
>their high fat supplement containing "whole extruded organic soybeans
>with all the oil and enzymes still present".

Do they explain by what magic their oil will not compete with absorption
sites, while oil from any other source will?  I won't even go into why
feeding whole soybeans to performance horses is a really poor idea.


 Isn't regular ole
>vegetable oil that one purchases at the grocery store just soybean oil
>in most cases?

Yup.


 Why would their supplement be superior - and what makes
>it different?  Are enzymes destroyed in processing vegetable oil?  Does
>corn oil have any impact on vitamin absorption or is this a marketing
>ploy?

Marketing ploy, aka Terrorist Nutrition.  Scare the dickens out of the
horseowner so they think that feeding anything not sold by their company
amounts to abuse.  Don't worry about it.

Susan Garlinghouse