>I am inclined to believe that stories of ferrets eating sugary foods
>and what not and then living a long life are a dangerous thing.  There
>are accounts of ferrets living with sugary diets; but there are many
>more accounts of ferrets with insulinoma and various diseases due to
>too much sugar.
 
I just want to remind folks that even for humans we barely know what
we are doing with nutrition.
 
Sugar is not bad.  Glucose is blood sugar, and without it you die.
Meat contains glycogen, which is the animal storage form of sugar just
as starch is the plant storage form of sugar.  The problem is amount.
Today, instead of getting sugar directly from plants, or even
concentrated in dried plants (like raisons) we extract it and make it
far more concentrated than it occurs in nature (except maybe honey).
 
Why do we do this?  We have taste buds for sugar.  We like sugar.  It is
thought that our tasting of, and craving for, sugar is an evolutionary
adaptation to erratic food supplies.  If you can find a concentrated
sugar source, like fruit, get it while you can.  Other animals, such as
dogs, do not taste or crave sugar.  There is apparently no evolutionary
advantage to them for that trait.
 
Ferrets like sugar.  This, to me, suggests that they have an evolutionary
prediliction towards seeking out sweet food (which can include rotting
meat, by the way -- rotting helps convert that glycogen into sugar.) So
they are in the same boat as people, IMHO.  The problem is not that sugar
is bad for them (some on this list talk as if sugar were actually
poisonous to them) but that we offer too much and in too concentrated a
form.  Even that generalization is based not on research but on a general
feeling and an analogy with humans.  We really can't say that various
ferret diseases are 'due to too much sugar'.
 
Scientists do not even know if dietary sugar is medically bad for humans.
We know it causes tooth decay, which can lead to other diseases.  We know
that as a calorie source it contributes to obesity, which is associated
with a whole spectrum of ill health.  But does sugar actually cause
diabetes, for instance?  In American Indian populations, there seems to
be a correlation between the adoption of a modern sweet diet and the rate
of diabetes.  We also know there is also a genetic factor.  Is it the
sugar itself which triggers the disease?  We really don't know.  No one
is suing Domino for the cost of their diabetes treatment.
 
Personally, I don't like to feed children super-processed and preserved
food of any kind.  Frozen pizza or corn chips have plenty of 'unnatural'
ingredients that in certain amounts are correlated with health risks.
The risk of a couple of potato chips a day is not as much as wolfing
down a whole bag, but I'd rather avoid the risk altogether.
 
OK, that last was deliberately phrased like some of the comments about
sweet treats.  That's not meant to point fingers, but just the opposite.
No, I don't think you should give your ferret too many sweet treats.
Just like I don't think a child should be given twinkies and a chocolate
milkshake for dinner (I have seen it done!).  But I think it is putting
way too much guilt onto someone to say that they are risking the health
of their ferrets for a momentary joy -- no more so than you would say
that about including bags of chips in your kids' lunches, or letting
them have soda.
 
As Aristotle said, "moderation in all things".
 
-Claire
[Posted in FML issue 5248]