Sugar rationing during and after the second world war appears to have improved the health of people born in Britain at the time, reducing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure decades later. This suggests that consuming less sugar early in life may improve health in adulthood.
Exposure to a diet high in sugar while still in the womb has previously been linked to an increased risk of obesity, which is known to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure or hypertension. However, whether this is a causal relationship remains unclear, and investigations into these questions have been hampered because it is difficult, or even unethical, for researchers to force people to follow a particular diet.
But the same cannot be said for wartime governments, which is why Tadeja Gracner at the University of Southern California and his colleagues decided to take advantage of the situation in the second world war to act like a natural diet experiment. In January 1940, several months into the war, the British government began rationing food. This includes limiting adults’ consumption to around 40 grams of sugar per day. More than a decade later, in September 1953, rationing ended, and the public quickly doubled their sugar consumption.
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Gracner’s team analyzed the health records of more than 38,000 people surveyed as part of the UK Biobank project between 2006 and 2019. All were aged between 51 and 66 at the time of the survey and had become pregnant in the years before rationing ended, meaning they were exposed to restricted sugar intake. in the womb and early life. The researchers also looked at similar data from 22,000 people who became pregnant about a year after rationing ended. The two groups had a similar composition in terms of gender and race, and had similar family histories of diabetes, allowing for comparisons between them.
In both groups, there were more than 3,900 people diagnosed with diabetes, and 19,600 people diagnosed with hypertension, but the prevalence of both conditions was much lower in those who became pregnant during the rationing. Members of this group had a 35 per cent lower chance of developing type 2 diabetes by their mid-60s, and those who developed the disease were on average four years later than those who became pregnant after rationing ended. For hypertension, those in the ration group were 20 percent less likely to develop the disease by their mid-60s, and again had an average delay in developing the disease, this time by two years.
Most importantly, although rationing caused many changes in people’s diets in England, it seems that reducing sugar made a big difference. Despite changes in the types of food available, the average diet during rationing contained similar levels of other types of food, such as fats, meat, dairy products, cereals, and fruit, as afterward. One explanation may be that increased exposure to sugar at an early age leads to a preference for sweet foods throughout life, Gracner said. It can also cause epigenetic changes that reduce how well people control blood sugar levels, thereby increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes and hypertension, he said.
Alternatively, lower calorie consumption in general resulting from reduced sugar consumption could explain the improved health of babies conceived during rationing, says Scott Montgomery of Örebro University in Sweden, compared with lower sugar intake. During the rationing, people consumed about 100 fewer calories each day, and people who became pregnant during the rationing had a 30 percent lower risk of obesity than those who became pregnant afterward. This suggests that calorie reduction plays a role in this. “This may not be due to exposure to high sugar levels, but it could be due to other things,” said Montgomery.
However, although the UK’s current recommended dietary guidelines for sugar intake are similar to the amounts eaten during rationing, actual consumption is much higher. The results show there are real benefits from logging, Montgomery said. “People should reduce their sugar intake to recommended levels.”
Topic:
- food and Drink