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

Limit sugar intake during the first thousand days of the vine’s life.a -from conception to two years- reduces the risk of 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 Science, confirms that early development is a critical period for a person’s long-term health 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, High exposure to sugar in the womb is common in the United States. – through the mother’s diet, as well as during breastfeeding and special feeding of infants.

Additionally, research shows that most infants and young children consume sugary foods and drinks on a daily basis.

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 this period of restrictions, the amount of sugar consumed by citizens was comparable to current dietary recommendations, including for pregnant women and young children, but when rationing ended, sugar consumption almost 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 born during this rationing and exposed to low sugar levels in the early years of life had a 35% lower risk of developing diabetes and a 20% lower risk of developing hypertension.

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

The protective effect was more pronounced in people with limited exposure to sugar both in utero and after birth.and only exposure in utero reduced the risk by about a third.

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 dietary advice support who seek to avoid or reduce the consumption of simple sugars during pregnancy and delay their consumption as much as possible in early childhood.

As for limitations, he cautions that the study only included people born in the United Kingdom and is based on self-reported health data.

Additionally, it is limited to those born between 1951 and 1956, when “The type and availability of ultra-processed products may be very different from current ones,” warns the Scientific Media Center (SMC) of Spain.

For his part, Rafael Urialde de Andrés, 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 show: the importance of avoiding added sugar and excess free sugars from any food source in the first 1000 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 occurrence of some pathologies associated with both overweight and obesity,” he concludes.