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SALT LAKE CITY — Parents who want to reduce the risk their child will grow up to have diabetes or heart disease should consider restricting sugar consumption for their first 1,000 days, starting with conception.
A new study published in the journal Science finds that a low-sugar diet in utero and for baby's first two years offers "meaningful" risk reduction for chronic disease as an adult. Those with sugar restrictions during those first couple of years had as much as a 35% reduced risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and as much as 20% less risk of hypertension. "Low sugar intake by the mother prior to birth was enough to lower risks, but continued sugar restrictions after birth increased the benefits," per a news release on the study.
The researchers, from University of Southern California-Los Angeles, McGill University in Canada and University of California-Berkeley, used the "natural experiment" that was World War II sugar rationing in the United Kingdom and took a long look back at health outcomes to reach their conclusions. They noted that the UK limited sugar distribution in 1942 as part of food rationing, which didn't end until September 1953.
Studying sugar rationing
Using modern data from the massive UK Biobank, they looked at the effects of the early-life sugar restriction on health outcomes for adults who were conceived during that period of food rationing. "Notably, rationing did not involve extreme food deprivation overall," the researchers noted. Diets were generally similar to the recommendations today. But sugar intake has roughly doubled since the restrictions ended. Other food patterns have not changed, which is what creates that natural experiment, the scientists said.
"Studying the long-term effects of added sugar on health is challenging," a USC release quoted corresponding author Tadeja Gracner, senior economist at the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research.
"It is hard to find situations where people are randomly exposed to different nutritional environments early in life and follow them for 50 to 60 years. The end of rationing provided us with a novel natural experiment to overcome these problems," Gracner stated.
Researchers created a chance to look at the long-term health impact of sugar by comparing people who were born before and after the UK ended its sugar rationing in September 1953. The researchers said they used a "very tight window" around the end of the sugar rationing when looking for subjects that fit the criteria in the biobank.
While the lack of sugar early in life reduced risk, some who were in the sugar-ration group did develop diabetes and hypertension — but later than in the other groups. Onset of diabetes was delayed by four years, hypertension by two.
The researchers believe that reducing sugar intake during pregnancy and not exposing babies to it in the first couple of years will save money, extend life and improve later quality of life, they said.
According to the release, medical expenses each year for diabetes are around $12,000. And the younger someone develops it, the more it can impact life expectancy.
They note that sugar is everywhere, and it's hard to keep it away from children, but they also call doing so important. Co-author Paul Gertler of UC Berkeley and the National Bureau of Economic Research referred to sugar in early life as "the new tobacco" and suggested food manufacturers should be help accountable to formulate their baby foods with healthier options. He's an advocate, he said, of taxing sugary foods that "target kids."
The researchers said they also intend to look at how early-life sugar restriction affects education, wealth, chronic inflammation, cognitive function and dementia.
Evidence food matters
As the New York Times reported, "The results contribute to a body of evidence suggesting that nutrition very early in life can affect health much later." The article cites a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that focused on obesity, using records of 300,000 young men, all 19, whose mothers were in the first half of pregnancy carrying them during the Dutch famine of 1944-1945. The researchers found they were more likely to be obese at age 19 than men born after the famine. A different study found women whose mothers were pregnant in the famine were more likely be be heavier at age 50 than women who were born after the famine.
But the Times noted that famine studies don't point to a particular food or nutrient. The new study successfully isolates sugar.
Gracner told the Times that it's possible early exposure to sugar creates a craving that lasts — an idea borne out by the British National Diet and Nutrition Survey, which found people who were in utero or babies during the rationing ate less sugar later in life, too.
