Being sugar-deprived had major effects on these childrens’ health
People who were restricted to limited amounts of sugar in the first few years of life were less likely to develop diabetes and high blood pressure decades later, a new study has found.
The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, took advantage of a unique situation in the United Kingdom. The country was under strict rationing during World War II and its aftermath. When the rationing ended, in September 1953, the average sugar intake by people in Britain doubled. That provided a natural experiment and allowed the researchers to ask: What happened to the health of people who were conceived and born when sugar was rationed compared with people conceived and born just after sugar rationing ended?
To find out, the researchers, Tadeja Gracner, an economist at the University of Southern California, and her colleagues, Claire Boone of McGill University and Paul J. Gertler of the University of California, Berkeley, turned to the UK Biobank. It contains genetic and medical information on half a million people. The investigators analyzed the health of 60,183 people who were born from October 1951 through March 1956 and were age 51 to 60 when they were surveyed.
The investigators reported that those exposed to sugar rationing early in life had a 35% lower risk of diabetes and a 20% lower risk of high blood pressure in middle age. The onset of those chronic diseases was also delayed by four years for diabetes and two years for high blood pressure. They also found that disease protection was greatest for those who had been conceived during sugar rationing and were babies while rationing continued.
The results contribute to evidence suggesting that nutrition very early in life can affect health much later.
One thing the new study cannot answer, though, is why sugar rationing early in life had such profound effects later.
One idea, Gracner said, is that early exposure to sugar leads to a lifelong craving for it. People who were conceived and born during sugar rationing ate less sugar later in life, according to the British government’s National Diet and Nutrition Survey.
She sees the disease risk as “a cumulative response” to a lifetime of sugar consumption.
“Chronic diseases do take time to develop,” she said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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