Nutrition: Cavy Nutrition Charts Discussion Thread

[Ly&Pigs]

This is the discussion thread for this thread:
http://www.guineapigcages.com/forum/...tml#post254730

[weta!]

Thanks for the useful chart. Just a quick suggestion - the colours aren't very intuitive, and it would be really useful if the chart used a traffic light system for easy reference.

[Ly&Pigs]

You're getting what you are getting for the time being. This thread is more for question on veggies/fruits in the charts than how they look.

[weta!]

Ouch . . . As I said, it's a useful chart. I certainly did not intend to disparage your efforts. I merely assumed that you would welcome and value some feedback.

[Ly&Pigs]

I do welcome feedback, unfortunately I just don't have the time to work on other color schemes right now nor redo the pdf or picture files I used to create that thread with. I didn't mean to come of as rude or mean. Sorry.

[jabberwock]

First of all - thank you very much for the list, it's really useful and I think the colours are fine.

But, some comments/questions on chard that continue to confuse me:
I am curious as to why chard is OK every day and beet greens only very occasionally as the two plants are very closely related. If you do some googling on "Swiss Chard oxalic acid" you get a string of results all saying that chard has high levels of oxalic acid. So maybe it's not a good idea to feed it every day? There are no oxalic acid figures for chard in the USDA analysis on which I assume the guinea lynx charts were based, and I guess this is why chard isn't on the guinea lynx oxalic acid list.
But if you look at this link
Oxalic Acid and Foods
then chard has very similar oxalic acid levels to beet greens as you might expect. Interestingly this table seems to show that different ("apparently trustworthy") groups analysing oxalic acid levels get enormously different results (look at carrots).

I'm not trying to be difficult, I am genuinely very confused. I also realise that oxalic acid levels vary with the age of the plant so I tend to feed young, small leaves 2 or 3 times a week and the very large leaves never. But maybe I'm being too cautious?

I did ask similar questions on a thread several months ago, but I was the only person to reply to myself!

[Slave to the Wheek]

Not sure what you are interested in discussing here... I do have some comments on the content.

THIS IS AN AMAZING LIST for one thing, so thank you so much for all your hard work. I know that this took many hours.

Banana Peels would be a nice addition since it seems to come up quite often on different forums. I'm glad to see orange peels listed.

Also, since Organic Spring Mix has become an afforbable option with all the Costco stores around it would be nice to have that on it. They have their nutrition info posted on their website for anyone who wants to calculate it on their own. The only thing is that they recently stopped putting spinach in their mix, but the page hasn't changed as of today. Don't know if they plan on putting it back later or not. I know that the label on the boxes no longer say spinach in the ingredients lists though.
Earthbound Farm Organic One-Pound Salads

I'm assuming things considered "unapproved" are not listed on purpose.I like that idea, as it makes it easy to remember that if it's on the list it won't kill them. The only problem with not listing them is that people will be constantly asking if it's okay --assuming that no one thought to put it on the chart. Items like Beets, Snap peas/Sugar peas, Carrot Tops, Wheatgrass, Catnip, Peppermint, are things I've seen discussed but aren't on the list for example.

[Jennicat]

That is truly an amazing chart. Would it be ok to link to the post on the chart from other communities?

I do have one question... does it take in account sugar content when reccomending feeding frequency? I've noticed that strawberries are listed as "almost daily", but wasn't sure if they were too sugary.

[Fay]

Content:

Very good content, What would be handy is if you make an additional chart that has the foods alligned in the specific color groups rather then alphabetically so you could print a list of the best foods to give on regular basis would make it easier to remember or take with you to the shop.

Also when the chart is finished it would be a very good idea to make it in other languages as well, For example I'm not natively english speaking and even though my english is good I do have trouble with the names of vegies,herbs and fruits. It would therefor be very handy to have it in my native language. Also that way I could print it out and hand it out to petshops together with a careguide and such.

Looks:

It might be better to change the background colors as they are rather harsh which makes it diffecult to read the chart, Softer and lighter colors would make it much more user friendly. Also the traffic light idea of the previous posts is a very good idea. If you don't have time to do that I would be more then happy to do that for you.

[jabberwock]

Oops - another question. I think it relates to Buffy's point about naming oif vegetables. I am a keen vegetable grower and in my seed catalogues winter squash=pumpkin. On this nutrition list they're different. So in the UK we must classify vegetables differently but I'm not sure exactly how. Not that I'm expecting anyone to create a cavy appropriate list of all the specific varieties of pumpkins I grow but it would be good to know what people the other side of the Atlantic mean by pumpkin/squash.

[Percy's Mom]

Pumpkin = Watch Your Garden Grow - Pumpkin
Winter Squash = Watch Your Garden Grow - Winter Squash

Pumpkin is a variety of winter squash, but not the only variety.

[jabberwock]

Originally Posted by Percy's Mom

Pumpkin = Watch Your Garden Grow - Pumpkin
Winter Squash = Watch Your Garden Grow - Winter Squash

Pumpkin is a variety of winter squash, but not the only variety.

|Thanks for that Looking at the wide variety of winter squashes and pumpkins listed, my guess would be that there is a wide variety of nutritional content (sugars, vitamins etc) for the different varieties. A lot depends on how they're grown too. It's fairly easy to produce a very large pumpkin that's pretty much all water and is fairly well devoid of vitamins and sugar (or taste!).

Actually my pigs won't eat them anyway (pity because we have a very large collection in our kitchen).

[Ly&Pigs]

First of all I want to state that these charts are in no way related to the ones at guinealynx. Every bit of data in these charts I compiled by hand using mainly the USDA website and some internet searches. I did not use nor take any of the info from gl but much of the info should be very consistent with the info on gl.

Jabberwock- at the time I did these (finished in late June of 2005), I had found no info about oxalic acid content in chard. The veggies/fruits are in the categories they are in due to all factors combined. I took into account how much of all given things were in each veggie/fruit when categorizing them for how often to feed. Beet greens contain more sugar and over twice the amount of calcium compared to chard. Just those two factors alone without the oxalic acid content makes chard able to be fed a bit more often than beet greens. Oxalic acid content does increase with age of the plant, so if you are feeding very young leaves a couple times a week, I don't see a problem with that. The reason I listed pumpkin separately from winter squash is becuase people have asked many questions regarding pumpkin itself. At the USDA site, they listed (at the time I did the charts) Winter squash, all varieties and summer squash, all varieties. I don't even know the names of all the types but they have just taken them all and kinda did an estimate I think.

Slave to the Wheek- Beets and Snap peas/Sugar peas are on the list. Look under "other veggies". Peas are under "Peas, edible-podded". If you look at the pdf, wheatgrass is on there. It's hard to find some info on things like banana peel and carrot tops. As for herbs, I used the ones most commonly fed. This list pretty much is just the very most commonly used fruits and veggies. I never even thought about packaged spring mixes or baby lettuces when making the charts.

Jennicat- Yes it's ok to link to it on other communities but please make sure they know my copyright info. All factors, sugar content included were taken into consideration when formulating how often to feed.

Buffy- Thanks for the suggestions. The pages that T and I have been working on for the site do have lighter colors and you will be able to sort the data out inlcuding sorting by group colors. You will just have to wait for the other version for that. I did the color scheme I did because I wanted the charts to really stand out. In the future it may be translated into other languages.

What I want all to understand is that this project has been and still is my baby. I worked many, many long hours gathering data and putting it in, calculating what was in what and how often to feed and calculated the Ca:Ph ratios myself.

The future version will be so much better and contain a bit more information, I may include more safe veggies as well. It will also contain photos of every veggie listed. As I mentioned earlier it will be completely sortable for every category and the original version contains more categories (I took 3 columns out for this version).

[Jennicat]

Thank so you much Ly, this is an invaluable resource.

[fairysari]

The charts look great, and I really admire all the hard work you've put into this project, Ly.

I've been taking pictures of different veggies as I buy them lately, and I'd be willing to donate any pictures you might need to this project, if you need some.

[Ly&Pigs]

Thanks fairy, but we already have all the photos except one for chickory greens and it must be on a plain white background.

[fairysari]

Okay, I will have a look for chicory greens when I go to the grocery store tomorrow.

Have you thought at all about turning the info into an excel calculator like the GL calculators?

edit to add: Wait, chicory? Is that the same as escarole? I know I can find that. I found this: Escarole -- Chicory and Endive and now I am confused!

[CBrewton5]

This is a fantastic list! However......

Do NOT take these copyrighted images or the copyrighted pdf document and post them anywhere else on the web

OK so we can't post it anywhere, but can we share it with our other list to help educate, giving credit to you of course for providing it?

[Ly&Pigs]

Let's see if I can clarify this. You cannot take the images nor pdf file and post them on other sites but you may provide a link on other sites to this thread. Make sense?

edit to add: Wait, chicory? Is that the same as escarole? I know I can find that. I found this: Escarole -- Chicory and Endive and now I am confused!

Chickory is it's own plant, true endive is a species of chickory. Curly endive and escarole are true endives.

Chicory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[fairysari]

Okay, I looked at the wikipedia page. So chicory is the genus.

Chicorium endivia - that's 'cultivated endive' or curly endive and escarole
Chicorium intybus - that's 'common chicory' or radicchio, belgian endive, witloof
Chicorium pumilum - that's 'wild endive' which I think would just be considered a forage?

Okay, so which one of these chicories are you looking for?
I don;t know if I am more or less confused now!