Is beet pulp (and other high-fiber horse feed) edible to humans?

[Alex K Chen]

I've been feeding hay to guinea pigs recently, and have recently gotten more interested in equine nutrition as an indirect result. Horses seem to rely heavily on low-calorie high-fiber food much of the time. Could much of this be edible (and filling) to humans?

[sirtuin]

This reminds me of when I wanted to get a masticating juicer specifically for the fresh fruit pulp (minus a lot of the sugar) rather than the juice.

 

With beets, I would be curious about the oxalates adding up -- for a while, I was eating 1-2 large beets a day with lots of beet greens throughout the week, but I've since cut back for slight concerns about the oxalate content.

 

For a while, I was maximizing my fiber intake (on a per day basis), while lately I've been playing with decreasing fiber on a per meal basis.  Wolfing down 1 feast-like meal a day with 80g of fiber (~6-9 cups of vegetables) had me looking like I just ate a bowling ball by the mid afternoon, where I'm finding a lower fiber diet is a bit more comfortable.  Ymmv.

[Gordo]

The bioavailability of oxalates in beets is relatively poor (6 times less so than spinach, for example).

[AlPater]

Did you look at you reference's Table 1, Gordo?

 

The oxalates in beets is more bioavailable than that in spinach.  Interesting, tea's was more than 10 more bioavailable.

 

http://sci-hub.cc/10.1016/0278-6915(89)90067-7

[Gordo]

Al - thanks for pointing that out.  The paper is pretty poorly written (or at least organized) in my opinion, they show the table you refer to as a reference to Finch et al's findings from 1981, but their own experiment contradicts those earlier findings.  They explain this a bit more in the discussion section of the paper. "Oxalate bioavailability from sugar beet fibre was 0.7% compared with bioavailabilities of 4.5 and 6.2% for spinach and oxalate solutions, respectively. The low bioavailability of oxalate from sugar beet fibre may be attributable to its high ratio of minerals (calcium and magnesium) to oxalate, its complex fibre matrix or the loss of the soluble oxalate during processing of sugar beets."

 

Basically what they found was that almost none of the oxalate from beets is bioavailable.

[AlPater]

Gordo,

 

You again seem to have not distinguished between beets and the processed food product.  Even the abstract seems to have used the difference to explain the results.  And I do prefer to take whole foods.

 

Sirtuin's table described beets, not its processed food product and you said:

 

"The bioavailability of oxalates in beets is relatively poor (6 times less so than spinach, for example)."

 

PS, I did notice the comments from the paper that you quoted.

[Gordo]

You are right.  I guess extracting the sugar also extracts the oxalates?  I wonder if beet sugar extract then contains a massive dose of oxalates or if they are removed from that as well?  Like you I eat whole foods.  So far I've never had to worry about oxalates, but I'll remember this in the future if I ever get a stone.  I eat whole beets almost every single day.  Best way to avoid stones is to avoid animal protein.