In Defense of Sweet Feed

I'm NOT an expert obviously, and I'm not someone who enjoys spending hours reading the latest horse feed research and comparing feed analysis labels. I do consult our equine vet about feed though, and I'll do the analysis comparisons, to make sure the horses are getting good nutrition and that we're getting good value for our money. 
Also, I want to make clear I'm not advocating sweet feed for easy keepers and horses that could be prone to laminitis - there are some very good reasons to keep them on low sugar diets. What's led me to write this post is the results I've gotten over the past few months in feeding Rogo a product that contains molasses. 
Since coming back to riding seven years ago I've noticed that no one feeds sweet feed. When I was a teenager decades ago, it was standard procedure where I lived (rural Nova Scotia) that horses got pasture only in summer and hay and sweet feed in winter. There's some logic to this, but I won't go into it here. However the 'no sweet feed' mantra became so quickly ingrained when I got a horse again, that I didn't even think about feeding it. 
When I struggled with Rogo's lack of energy and forwardness, for years, I was told that's just his natural personality. I consulted the vet about it on several occasions and fed supplements he ordered in for me. I consulted with an equine nutritionist and fed as she directed for awhile, fed a high protein diet, etc. At one point he was on 16 litres of feed a day. Nothing made even the slightest difference in his energy level.

I did get him forward in the past without it, through weeks / months of training with a very experienced, level 3 instructor who pushed us hard three times a week. When Rogo has time off though, we're right back where we started and honestly I just don't think I could go through that building phase on my own. It's completely physically and emotionally draining and I'll tell you that it literally gives me nightmares and leaves me feeling shattered. 
I've tried every trick in the book - hacking out, cavelleti, treats and positive reinforcement, hill work and it always comes back to the same thing - put the weeks / months into a brutal grind of forcing fitness training or have a horse that lives behind my leg. Neither option was / is palatable to me anymore.
Then, .... I rediscovered sweet feed. I might call it life changing, but that could sound flip. Let me just say I'm in love with it. Rogo is a different horse when getting it. He isn't hot or spooky, and he still needs to build fitness after time off, but he's there with me - a happy partner going forward in his work. 
I first tried it this past June and was very impressed - a happy forward horse even though he'd had most of May off and it was getting pretty hot out. Yeah! 
Okay - I'm going to back up a step and describe the feed - it's a pelleted feed with lots of good ingredients, but it includes molasses. It's billed as a foal, lactating mare and performance horse feed and it claims to be low sugar. I'm here to call the low sugar part bullshit. Molasses is high in the ingredients list (impossible to tell what percentage) and honestly, it's delicious. I could eat it for breakfast with a little yogurt on top. It smells wonderful, is packed with omegas and is a sweet, fatty treat :). 
Rogo LOVES it and he is much more forward when he gets it. While he was off in the summer / early fall with a stone bruise I switched him to a performance version from the same company, that had almost the same analysis but no molasses, and he was dead again when I brought him back to work. Back to the molasses version and back to a horse much more willing to work. He / we still need to build fitness, so the forward has staying power, and as we build it I may decrease the sweet feed and increase the non-sweet feed, but it's been a great thing for us.
Sweet feeds wouldn't be a good option for many horses - most / all readers here know more about feed than I do, so I won't go into too much detail.  I'd definitely say proceed with caution and do your research if you think it might be helpful for your horse. It can be associated with increased laminitis risk, i.e. drafts and ponies may be at higher risk. Also, I'm not happy with the idea that it may increase susceptibility to tooth decay (I'm not sure there's proof it does - many horse feeds as well as grass have high sugar levels). 
I'll conclude with saying we feed a very small amount to our draft cross Savanah (she's one I wouldn't give very much too) and when I posted pictures of her on Facebook recently we got comments that she looks the best she'd ever looked. At fifteen years of age her gaits are the best they've ever been as well - uphill jumping canter, big trot, marching walk. Also, our sweet Appaloosa Dan is back to work after several years off, is also getting a very small amount of sweet feed, and is also going better now than when we stopped work three years ago. 
I googled sweet feed before writing my post to see what pros and cons I'd come up with, and here's the first thing that came up: Sweet Feed Whiskey. So if you buy it and decide you don't like it, there's no down side. You're all set for a batch of whiskey. 
There's my anecdotal information on sweet feed. A decent researcher, let alone a scientist, would shoot holes in my conclusions like shooting trout in a demitasse cup, but I'm sold.