>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]