Limiting sugar intake during pregnancy and in the first two years of a child’s life has a positive impact on long-term health, significantly reducing the risk of developing chronic diseases during adulthood, from diabetes to hypertension, as revealed by a new study published in the journal Science.
The researchers used contemporary data from the UK Biobank to analyze the effect that sugar restrictions from in utero and during early childhood had had on the health of adults who had been born just before and after the end of wartime sugar rationing. in the United Kingdom, in September 1953.
The results show that children who experienced sugar restrictions in their first 1,000 days of life – including the prenatal period – had up to a 35% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes and a 20% lower risk of suffering from hypertension in adulthood. Restriction in utero was sufficient to reduce risks, but protection against disease increased as a function of the length of time sugar restriction was maintained after birth.
This research is the result of a collaboration between Tadeja Gracner of the University of Southern California, Claire Boone of McGill University, and Paul Gertler of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley and provides new evidence on the effects on long-term health from early exposure to sugar.
“Studying the long-term effects of added sugar on health is challenging because it is difficult to find situations in which people are randomly exposed to different nutritional environments early in life and follow them for 50 to 60 years.” explained Gracner in a note published by the Haas School of Business, adding: “The end of rationing provided us with a novel natural experiment to overcome these problems.”
An experiment based on the end of sugar reasoning
The study takes advantage of a natural experiment: the end of sweets and sugar rationing in the United Kingdom after World War II. During the war, rationing was in effect and ended in September 1953. At that time, sugar consumption was about half (about 40 grams daily) of what it was just after the end of rationing.
This period of restriction did not entail extreme food deprivation; In fact, the diets appeared to fall within current USDA and WHO dietary guidelines, which recommend that children under two years of age should not eat added sugar, and that adults limit their sugar intake to 7 teaspoons daily, not exceeding 12 teaspoons (50 grams).
When rationing ended, consumption of sugar and sweets increased considerably, doubling to about 80 grams a day on average. Other foods, such as butter, cheese, cereals, and meat, were also rationed, but their consumption did not change significantly after the end of rationing. Virtually all of the increase in caloric intake was due to increased sugar consumption.
“Sugar in the early stages of life is the new tobacco and we should treat it as such, holding food companies accountable to reformulate baby foods with healthier options”
In this way, the end of rationing created a natural experiment: children born just before the end of rationing lived in sugar-scarce conditions, while those born afterward arrived in a sugar-rich environment. The researchers identified those born around that time in UK Biobank data, collected more than 50 years later, and used a very narrow time window around the end of rationing to compare the midlife health outcomes of cohorts of similar births.
Prevent or delay the development of type 2 diabetes
The authors found that exposure to sugar restrictions in utero and in the first 1,000 days significantly reduced the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and hypertension. If diagnosed, reduced sugar consumption in childhood delayed the onset of diabetes by four years and hypertension by two years, respectively. Prenatal exposure was sufficient to decrease risks, but protection increased with longer duration of sugar restriction after birth.
The impact of this effect is significant, as it could reduce medical costs, increase life expectancy, and improve quality of life. Each decade of early diagnosis of diabetes is associated with a life expectancy of three to four years less, underscoring the value of early interventions to prevent or delay this disease.
Currently, there is growing concern about the long-term health of children due to excessive consumption of added sugars at this critical stage. Added sugar is present in many baby and toddler foods, and children are constantly exposed to advertisements for sugary snacks.
Adjusting your sugar intake isn’t easy, but researchers say information is key. “Parents need information about what works, and this study provides some of the first causal evidence that reducing added sugar early in life is an important step to improving children’s health throughout their lives,” Boone explained.
“Sugar in early life is the new tobacco and we should treat it as such, holding food companies accountable to reformulate baby foods with healthier options. We should also tax and regulate the marketing of sugary foods to children,” concludes Gertler.
In the opinion of Jesús Francisco García-Gavilán, researcher at CIBERobn and associate professor at the Rovira i Virgili University, at the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute, who has not participated in the study: “The results show that those who were exposed to low sugar levels in their first years of life had a much lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes and hypertension compared to those born after rationing and, furthermore, the age at which these diseases developed was an average of two and four years later, respectively, which seems to indicate that limiting the intake of simple sugar and its derivatives in childhood could prevent or delay in some way the development of chronic health problems,” as stated to SMC Spain.
“As for limitations, it must be taken into account that the study only considered people born in the United Kingdom and that their health data was self-reported. It also refers to people who were born between 1951 and 1956, where the type and availability of ultra-processed products could be very different from today,” adds the expert.
