Durham and colleagues' 2019 consensus statement on equine metabolic syndrome (EMS) which you published in January 2019 is a much-needed article to help promote understanding of EMS, promote evidence-based treatment strategies, and help veterinarians give practical evidence-based information to their horse-owning clients. In section 7.1, carrots are quoted as having a high NSC content, which is incorrect. New carrots contain (per 100 g as fed), 5.8 g starch and total sugar, and old carrots, 7.3 g starch and total sugar. Apples were also quoted as having a high NSC content, which is also incorrect as whole raw apples (as fed) contain 10 g starch and total sugar per 100 g.4 Perhaps confusion between as fed and dry matter feed composition? The authors themselves quoted hay at 10% NSC as “having a low NSC content”; therefore, this is a contradiction to them stating apples and carrots (at 10% and maximum 7.3% NSC as fed, respectively) are high in NSC. There is no mention of forage energy content in section 7.1, despite the title of the section being “dietary energy restriction,” apart from the reduction of energy intake to 64%-94% of maintenance via reducing dry matter intake. There is also no mention of forage energy content in section 7.3 “Key dietary recommendations.” It is good nutrition practice to source lower energy forage when restricting dietary energy, considering that mixed species grass hay can vary in digestible energy content,5 and it is considered best practice to feed forage of a lower energy content if weight loss is not occurring on the minimum recommended intake of forage (15 g DM/kg BW). Regarding haylage recommendations, the study referred to by the authors (128. Carslake et al, 2018) used haylage with NSC similar to that of the hay (18.5% + 4.1), which is not typical for haylage and which could be described as “high NSC.”1-3, 7 Fermented forages (haylage) with very low NSC content (under 5% DM) are available.2 The recommendation made by the authors that haylage should not be fed could limit the di...