Limiting sugar in infancy reduces the risk of diabetes and hypertension

The occasional sweet treat probably won’t ruin your health. But too much added sugar at a young age can increase the risk of health complications later in life.

Limiting added sugars during the first 1,000 days after conception — that is, during pregnancy and a baby’s first two years — reduces a child’s risk of developing diabetes and hypertension as adults, researchers report Oct. 31 in Science.

“In the first 1,000 days of life, the brain and body are preparing to complete development,” says Sue-Ellen Anderson-Haynes, a registered dietitian in Boston and a spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Nutrition during that time period is especially important, she says, because “everything the mother eats is converted into nutrients for the fetus.”

Current nutritional guidelines recommend that adults consume less than 40 grams of added sugars per day and that children under the age of 2 consume no added sugars. But by age 2, the average American child consumes about 29 grams of added sugars per day; an average adult consumes about 80 grams per day.

To study the effects of excess added sugars early in life, economist Tadeja Gracner of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and colleagues took advantage of a natural experiment: the end of sugar rationing in the United Kingdom after World War II. While rationing was in effect, each person was allotted about 8 ounces (about 227 grams) of sugar per week. After sugar rationing ended in September 1953, daily sugar consumption for adults dropped to about 80 grams per day.

Although other foods were rationed during and after World War II, sugar intake increased more after rationing was lifted. Consumption of other rationed foods, such as cheese, milk and fresh fruit, remained relatively constant after rationing ended. Similarly, the end of butter rationing caused many families to switch from margarine, with its unsaturated fats, back to butter, so overall fat consumption did not increase significantly.

Gracner and her colleagues collected data from the UK Biobank on more than 60,000 participants born between October 1951 and March 1956. They divided the participants into two groups: Individuals born before July 1954 who experienced rationing of sugar in utero and early in life, and those born from July 1954 onwards who experienced no rationing.

People who experienced sugar rationing early in life were less likely to develop type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure in adulthood than people who did not experience sugar rationing, the team found. The risk of developing diabetes in people who rationed early in life was about 62 percent of the risk experienced by those whose sugar intake was not rationed; the risk of developing hypertension in those who experienced rationing was about 79 percent of the risk of those who did not.

Children who experienced sugar rationing early on were not immune to developing these chronic conditions, but it did tend to happen later in life: four years later on average for diabetes than the unrationed group, and two years later on average for high blood pressure of blood. Participants were also less likely to develop diabetes and hypertension if they experienced sugar rationing in utero, even if the participant did not experience rationing after birth.

Avoiding added sugars can be challenging, Gracner says, especially when so many foods for adults and young children contain them. “I don’t want parents to feel guilty about giving their kids sugar ever,” she says. More nutrition education and regulations on the marketing and pricing of sugary foods could help parents choose less sugar-laden options for their children and themselves, she says (SN: 16.4.19).

“I think we all want to improve our health and give our children the best start in life,” says Gracner. “The bottom line is that reducing added sugar in the beginning is one of the powerful steps in that direction.”