Nutritionists: any issue with this?

[Xanthoria]

My mare is a bit picky about her food, and incredibly dextrous about sifting out all supps even if they are mixed with wet beet: she just eats the chunks. In the past I made certirizine treats for another horse, dried in a toaster oven because cetirizine is quite heat stable, and it worked great.

Are there any issues with the following ingredients a) being mixed, along with some pelleted horse feed b) dampened with molasses and applesauce, and c) drying in the oven (lowest setting is 65 degrees: lower than some dehydrators)?

Magnesium malate powder (2 tbsp)
Vitamin E powder (1 tbsp)
Salt (2 tbsp)
Smartpack SmartVite Perform pellets
Maybe some electrolytes too

My plan as before is to mix up 6 portions of all the supps, add molasses and so on, then divide into 6 equal parts (or 12 if they’re huge) and dry into hopefully yummy treats. I am unsure how heat stable each of these is.

[Montanas_Girl]

Vitamin E is notoriously unstable. I think the other ingredients will probably be just fine.

[luvmyhackney]

Pretty sure you can’t heat up vitamin e without it loosing its potency. Do you have to dry and just keep them in the fridge?

[Xanthoria]

I found this online:

“ Vitamin E’s heat stability depends on the temperature and time of exposure. For example, alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E) is stable up to 503 K, but loses about 95% of its mass between 503 K and 723 K, and almost completely decomposes at 773 K. In edible palm oil, vitamin E degradation increases between 210 °C and 278 °C, but the rate of degradation remains constant after 30 minutes at 278 °C. In barley, heating for 24 hours at 120 °C reduces the vitamin E content by 80.6 mg/kg, while at room temperature the content decreases by 5% per week”

So it sounds like as long as the oven is below 200° C the vitamin E should be fine?

[Montanas_Girl]

It’s not just the heat. Vitamin E also degrades in the presence of minerals like copper (the presence of an oil/fat can help mitigate this effect), moisture, and just over time with air exposure. It’s a problematic nutrient when it comes to shelf stability.

[Xanthoria]

Ok - easy enough to leave the vit E out of the cookies!