Maybe this isn’t the thing you want to read the week after a candy-rich holiday like Halloween, but there's a new study that shows a connection between consuming sugar early in life and chronic illnesses.
The study, recently published in the journal Science, found that reducing sugar intake in the first 1,000 days after conceiving a child — from gestation to two years old — can decrease the risk of chronic illnesses into adulthood.
Researchers found a connection between reducing sugar intake during this window of a child’s life decreased their chances of type 2 diabetes by about 35% and decreased the risk of high blood pressure by 20%.
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There’s also a decreased risk of obesity when cutting down on sugar during the first 1,000 days of life and there may be a correlation with a lack of preference for sweets later in life.
The research team behind the study examined data from before and after the end of the United Kingdom’s World War II-era sugar rationing in 1953 to reach these conclusions.
“Sugar rationing created an interesting natural experiment,” said Tadeja Gracner, the lead author of the study and a senior economist at the Center for Economics and Social Research at the University of Southern California.
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There are already published studies that show a link between various health issues and high consumption of processed sugar.