Avoiding sugar in the first thousand days of life protects against diabetes and hypertension

Restrict consumption of sugar in the first thousand days of life – from conception to two years – reduces the risk of suffering from diabetes and hypertension in adult life, according to a study based on food rationing applied in the United Kingdom after the Second World War.

The study, whose details were published this Thursday in the journal Science, confirms that early development is a critical period for the long-term health of people and that following an inadequate diet during this period has negative consequences in adulthood.

Although dietary guidelines recommend not adding sugar in the first years of life, in the United States it is common to suffer from high exposure to sugar from the womb – through maternal diet – and during breastfeeding and child-specific diets. you drink.

Besides, Research suggests that most infants and young children consume sugary foods and drinks daily.

To study the long-term effects of early sugar consumption on health, Tadeja Gracner of the University of Southern California and a team of scientists from the universities of Berkeley, Chicago, and McGill examined the effects of sugar rationing. and sweets imposed in the United Kingdom at the end of World War II, a natural experiment that lasted until 1953.

During that period of restrictions, the sugar ration received by citizens was comparable to current dietary guidelines, including those for pregnant women and young children, but when rationing ended, sugar consumption practically doubled overnight. .

Using data from the UK Biobank, researchers studied the health status of people who were and were not exposed to sugar rationing in utero and in the first years of life. Thus they discovered that sugar rationing in the first years of life had notable long-term health benefits.

According to the results, those who were born during this rationing and were exposed to low levels of sugar in their first years of life they had a 35% lower risk of developing diabetes and a 20% lower risk of developing hypertension.

Furthermore, the age at which these diseases developed in adulthood was delayed by an average of 4 and 2 years, respectively.

The protective effect was most pronounced in people exposed to restricted sugar both in utero and after birth, with in utero exposure alone accounting for about a third of the risk reduction.

Furthermore, the effect was further amplified after 6 months of age, probably coinciding with the introduction of solid foods, according to the data provided by the study.

Expert opinions

For the CIBERObn researcher Jesús Francisco García Gavilán, the results of this study validate the conclusions of previous studies and support dietary recommendations that seek to avoid or reduce the consumption of simple sugars during the gestational stage and delay the consumption of these as much as possible. during early childhood.

Regarding the limitations, cautioned that the study only used people born in the United Kingdom and is based on self-reported health data.

In addition, it is limited to those born between 1951 and 1956, when “the type and availability of ultra-processed products could be very different from today,” he told the Science Media Center (SMC) Spain.

For his part, Rafael Urrialde de Andrés, professor at the Faculty of Biological Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid and member of the Board of Directors of the Spanish Nutrition Society, considered that the work “corroborates what other studies also demonstrate: the importance to not incorporate added sugar nor to have an excess of free sugars, from any food source, in the first 1,000 days of life,” he told SMC Spain.

“This restriction, not only with added sugar but also with free sugars, has a positive effect on the reduction of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents and the subsequent appearance of certain pathologies linked to both overweight and obesity,” he concluded.