Limiting added sugars during the first 1,000 days after conception — so during pregnancy and a baby’s first two years — reduces the risk of a child developing diabetes and hypertension in adulthood, according to a recent study published in Science.
“In the first 1,000 days of life, the brain and body are gearing up to finish developing,” says Sue-Ellen Anderson-Haynes, a registered dietician in Boston and a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Nutrition during that timeframe is particularly important, she says, because “everything the mother eats gets transformed into nutrients for the fetus.”
Current nutritional guidelines recommend that adults consume less than 40 grams of added sugars per day and that children under age 2 consume no added sugars. However, by age 2, the average American child consumes about 29 grams of added sugars a day, while the average adult consumes nearly 80 grams per day.
To study the effects of excess added sugars early in life, economist Tadeja Gracner of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and colleagues conducted a study using data from the U.K. Biobank. They analyzed more than 60,000 participants born between October 1951 and March 1956, dividing them into two cohorts based on whether they experienced sugar rationing in early life.
The researchers found that individuals who experienced sugar rationing early in life were less likely to develop type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure in adulthood compared to those who did not experience sugar rationing. The risk of developing diabetes among those who rationed early in life was about 62 percent of the risk experienced by those whose sugar intake was not rationed, while the risk of developing hypertension was about 79 percent of the risk of those who did not ration.
Kids who experienced sugar rationing early were not immune to developing these chronic conditions, but it tended to happen later in life. Participants were also less likely to develop diabetes and hypertension if they experienced sugar rationing in utero, even if they did not experience rationing after birth.
Avoiding added sugars can be challenging, especially when so many foods for both adults and young children contain them. More nutritional education and regulations on the marketing and pricing of sugary foods could help parents choose less sugar-laden options for their kids and themselves, according to Gracner.
“I think we all want to improve our health and give our children the best starting life,” says Gracner. “The takeaway is that reducing added sugar early is one of the powerful steps in that direction.”
