Reducing sugar intake during the first 1,000 days after conception—from conception through age two—may lower a child's risk of developing chronic illnesses in adulthood. a new study published in Science has found.

Leveraging data from post-World War II sugar rationing in the UK, the findings highlight critical long-term health benefits from reduced sugar intake  early in life.

“Using an event study design with UK Biobank data comparing adults conceived just before or after rationing ended, we found that early-life rationing reduced diabetes and hypertension risk by about 35% and 20%, respectively, and delayed disease onset by 4 and 2 years,” the study says.

“Protection was evident with in-utero exposure and increased with postnatal sugar restriction, especially after six months when solid foods likely began. In-utero sugar rationing alone accounted for about one third of the risk reduction,” the study adds.

The research team analyzed data from before and after the end of the United Kingdom's World War II-era sugar rationing, which ended in September 1953.

Rationing began in January 1940 to ensure "fair shares" of food during the wartime shortage, according to the Imperial War Museums. Access to foods such as sugar, fats, bacon, meat, and cheese was limited. When sugar rationing ended in September 1953, the average adult’s daily sugar consumption in the UK nearly doubled, rising from about 40 grams to 80 grams.

The study is a collaboration by researchers Tadeja Gracner from the University of Southern California, Claire Boone of McGill University, and Paul Gertler of the University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

“Studying the long-term effects of added sugar on health is challenging because it is hard to find situations where people are as-if randomly exposed to different nutritional environments early in life and follow them for 50 to 60 years,” Gracner told Berkeley Haas. “The end of rationing provided us with a novel natural experiment to overcome these problems.”

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