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

Limiting sugar intake in the first 1,000 days of life—from conception to age two—reduces the risk of developing diabetes and hypertension in adulthood.according to a study based on food rationing used in the United Kingdom after World War II.

The study, details of which were published this Thursday in the journal magazine Scienceconfirms that early development is a critical period for a person’s long-term health and that poor nutrition during this period has negative consequences in adulthood.

Although dietary guidelines recommend against added sugar in the early years of life, high exposure to sugar is common in the United States—from the womb to the mother’s diet—and during breastfeeding and diets designed specifically for infants.

Except, Research shows that most infants and young children consume sugary foods and drinks daily.

To study the long-term health effects of early sugar consumption, Tadeja Grakner of the University of Southern California and a team of scientists from the universities of Berkeley, Chicago and McGill studied the impact of sugar and sweets rationing introduced in the United States. 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 city residents was comparable to current nutritional standards.including for pregnant women and young children, but when rationing stopped, sugar consumption nearly doubled overnight.

Using data from the UK Biobank, the researchers looked at the health of people who were and were not subject to sugar rationing in utero and during the first years of life. In summary, they found that rationing sugar in the early years of life has significant long-term health benefits.

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

Additionally, the age at which these diseases developed in adulthood The delay was on average 4 and 2 years.respectively.

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

Except, The effect was further enhanced after 6 months of age. likely coincided with the introduction of solid foods, according to the study.

Expert opinions

According to CIBERObn researcher Jesús Francisco García Gavilan, the results of this study confirm the findings of previous studies and support dietary recommendations that aim to avoid or reduce the consumption of simple sugars during pregnancy and delay their consumption as much as possible. in early childhood.

Regarding restrictions, he warned that The study only included people born in the UK and is based on self-reported health data.

Except, limited to those born between 1951 and 1956, when “the type and availability of ultra-processed products may have been very different from today” said Scientific Media Center (SMC) Spain.

For his part, Rafael Urrialde de Andres, professor at the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid and member of the board of directors of the Spanish Society of Nutrition, believes that the work “confirms what other studies have demonstrated: the importance of the absence of added sugar and the absence of excess free sugars from any source food in the first 1,000 days of life,” he told SMC Spain.

“This limitation of not only added sugars, but also free sugars, has a positive effect on reducing overweight and obesity in children and adolescents and the subsequent emergence of some pathologies associated with both overweight and obesity,” he concluded.