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AmityvilleHams · 01-05-2020, 04:22 PM

I'm not sure why people are so against carrots in particular as they're not that high in sugar. An entire 10 gram baby carrot only has 0.5 grams of sugar, but a dwarf hamster wouldn't realistically be given that much of any vegetable at one time. Even with that in mind, carrot is low on the glycemic index - even further solidifying that they're not the big problem here!

Fruit is quite possibly the most controversial topic in the dwarf hamster nutrition world. It isn't necessarily a natural food, but we don't and cannot completely replicate 100% of the wild diet of many species or for various reasons(safety, ethics, quality control, etc) may not be capable of doing so. Not all fruit is exceptionally high in sugars, acids, or automatically this crazy blood sugar raising monster it can be portrayed as both for humans with diabetes and hamsters with diabetes.

It's a topic I've tried to tackle(with minimal success because not everyone wanted to consider the actual science and how things work), though unfortunately at this point in time I really don't know if I could devote as much time as before nor do I know if I really can handle the stress and such. It's a lot to dive into and it requires pushing boundaries to say the least, but I wouldn't recommend it to the average hamster owner as a fun research project since it really isn't a fun time gathering unending nutritional data for example!

That being said, I can say that it is very likely we just need to determine a safe and reasonable amount of fruit that could be incorporated rather than just saying all fruit is unacceptable within the diet. Tiny portions of blueberry very sparingly for example is probably perfectly safe, but the critical condition there is moderation - same with human diabetes. There is also science behind some sort of positive impact on blood sugar from tree nuts(peanuts/monkey nuts weren't evaluated - these aren't nuts at all anyways and are actually legumes), and tree nuts are definitely a food to include as they can offer so much nutritional value.

01-05-2020, 04:22 PM
AmityvilleHams PM Fluffy for custom title Join Date: Mar 2016 Posts: 4,545	Re: dwarf hamster treat options I'm not sure why people are so against carrots in particular as they're not that high in sugar. An entire 10 gram baby carrot only has 0.5 grams of sugar, but a dwarf hamster wouldn't realistically be given that much of any vegetable at one time. Even with that in mind, carrot is low on the glycemic index - even further solidifying that they're not the big problem here! Fruit is quite possibly the most controversial topic in the dwarf hamster nutrition world. It isn't necessarily a natural food, but we don't and cannot completely replicate 100% of the wild diet of many species or for various reasons(safety, ethics, quality control, etc) may not be capable of doing so. Not all fruit is exceptionally high in sugars, acids, or automatically this crazy blood sugar raising monster it can be portrayed as both for humans with diabetes and hamsters with diabetes. It's a topic I've tried to tackle(with minimal success because not everyone wanted to consider the actual science and how things work), though unfortunately at this point in time I really don't know if I could devote as much time as before nor do I know if I really can handle the stress and such. It's a lot to dive into and it requires pushing boundaries to say the least, but I wouldn't recommend it to the average hamster owner as a fun research project since it really isn't a fun time gathering unending nutritional data for example! That being said, I can say that it is very likely we just need to determine a safe and reasonable amount of fruit that could be incorporated rather than just saying all fruit is unacceptable within the diet. Tiny portions of blueberry very sparingly for example is probably perfectly safe, but the critical condition there is moderation - same with human diabetes. There is also science behind some sort of positive impact on blood sugar from tree nuts(peanuts/monkey nuts weren't evaluated - these aren't nuts at all anyways and are actually legumes), and tree nuts are definitely a food to include as they can offer so much nutritional value.