December 26, 2024
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World War II sugar rationing gave children a lifelong health boost
Children who were rationed had a significantly lower risk of diabetes and high blood pressure decades later
Lydia Whitmore/Getty Images
For several years after the end of World War II, the British government continued to ration certain foods, including eggs, dairy products, and sugar. This made not only useful recipes but popular recipes like “Wacky cake” based on vinegar; it also kept the average diet within what we now recognize as modern guidelines daily sugar consumption. Now a study shows that this reduction provided lifelong health benefits to people who were babies during the rationing.
Scientists have long wondered how sugar affects the developing body and brain. But observational studies of families consuming less or more sugar can have difficulty separating the effects of diet from related factors, such as income or geographic location. “This kind of experiment helps remove some of that noise,” says Juliana Cohen, a nutrition researcher at Merrimack College and the Harvard School of Public Health, who was not involved in the work.
The study’s authors used the UK’s BioBank medical database to compare the incidence of disease in around 60,000 people born in September 1953 in the years before or after sugar rationing. dates—allowing researchers to study the effects of reduced sugar during the developmentally critical first 1,000 days of life.
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Children raised in the years before sugar rationing ended had a 35% lower risk of diabetes and a 20% lower risk of high blood pressure compared to those born in the 50s and 60s. reported in science. For the ration-era children who ultimately developed these conditions, the onset was four and two years later, respectively. The longer a person lived under rationing, the greater the benefit they saw, but the strongest effects occurred in the womb and after the first six months of life, when babies start eating solid food.
Many mechanisms could explain the results, said lead author Tadeja Gračner, an economist at the University of Southern California. People who consume too much sugar can gain an unhealthy weight or develop diabetes during pregnancy, putting their children at risk of obesity and insulin resistance. High sugar consumption can also cause the growing fetus to express different genes with a similar effect. And children raised on sugary diets may prefer sweeter foods; in a separate study, Gračner’s team found that people exposed to rationing consumed less added sugar each day as adults than those who were not.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that children under the age of two avoid added sugar and that everyone else keep their daily intake to less than 10 percent of total calories. But today’s American toddlers average much more (almost six teaspoons of added sugar a day), and many pregnant women consume three times the amount recommended for adults. Cohen points out that dietary change is difficult because our food environment is not prepared to support it; however, any reduction helps and there is no need to avoid sugar completely.
“It’s all about moderation,” says Gračner. “Birthday cake, candy, a cookie here and there: these are treats we should enjoy.”
