United States: A study in the journal Science found that cutting sugar during the first 1,000 days of life – from pregnancy to age 2 – can lower the risk of serious health problems later. The research shows it can reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes by 35% and high blood pressure by 20%, and it can also delay these diseases by several years.
The pre and post research study covered the period prior and post to the termination of the UK World War II sugar rationing in September 1953.The UK began rationing in January 1940 since it lacked sufficient food to distribute “unequally” during the wartime scarcity, the Imperial War Museums noted. Getting hold of foods such as sugar, fats, bacon, meat and cheese was a scarce incidence.
As reported by the CNN Health, when sugar and sweets rationing finally ceased in September 1953 the average adult consumer in the UK effectively trebled his or her sugar intake from 40gms per day to 80gms.
The researchers focused on health information contributed to the UK Biobank, a long-term biomedical database and research facility, on 60,183 individuals born between October 1951 and March 1956, before and after rationing and the evidence that such a sharp increase in sugar intake has.
“Rationing of sugar produced an equally interesting natural experiment,” said Tadeja Gracner, the lead author and a senior economist at who is at the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA at CENTER FOR ECONOMICS AND SOCIAL RESEARCH.
A breakdown of the selected timespan revealed that babies born or conceived during the rationing period had 30% less chance of obesity than the subsequent birth cohorts whose development rates for type 2 diabetes and hypertension escalated more sharply after sugar rationing was lifted.
The research also concluded that when parents restrict the content of sugar consumed by the baby before birth and during his/her early years, it could be possible to reduce the ‘lifetime’ inclination towards sweet products by at least one third by way of rationing in the womb alone.
“We are designed to like sweet things from the moment of birth,” said Dr Mark Corkins, the division chief of pediatric gastroenterology and professor of pediatrics who is at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, who was not involved with the study.