The UK was forced to ration sugar during World War II
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Sugar rationing during World War II and World War II appears to have improved the health of people born in the UK at the time, reducing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure decades later. This suggests that consuming less sugar may improve health in adulthood.
There has been previous exposure to a high sugar diet in the womb associated with a higher risk of obesityKnown to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure or high blood pressure. However, it is unclear whether this is a causal link, and research into such questions is hampered by the fact that forcing researchers to follow specific diets is harsh or even unethical.
The same is not the case with wartime governments, and that is why Tadeja Gracner At the University of Southern California and his colleagues decided to take advantage of the situation of the second world war that acted as a natural diet experiment. In January 1940, a few months after the start of the war, the UK government began rationing food. In this, adults were limited to around 40 grams of sugar per day. A decade later, in September 1953, rationing ended, and people quickly increased their sugar consumption until it roughly doubled.
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. They were all between the ages of 51 and 66 when the surveys were conducted and were created a few years before the end of rationing, ie. they were exposed to limited sugar intake in the womb and early life. The researchers also analyzed the same data from 22,000 people raised a year or a year after rationing ended. The two groups were similar in gender and race composition, and had similar familial diabetes to allow comparisons between them.
In both groups, more than 3,900 people were diagnosed with diabetes, and 19,600 were diagnosed with high blood pressure, but the prevalence of both conditions was much lower in those who were born on rationing. Members of this group were 35% less likely to develop type 2 diabetes in their mid-60s, and those who developed the disease did so four years later, on average, than those who developed it after rationing ended. As for hypertension, those in the rationing group were 20% less likely to develop the disease by their mid-60s, and saw an average delay in developing it again, this time by two years.
Crucially, while rationing made many changes to people’s diets in the UK, reducing sugar seems to have made a big difference. Despite changes in food availability, the average diet during rationing contained similar levels of other types of food, such as fat, meat, milk, cereals and fruit, as after. One explanation may be that increased early exposure to sugar sets a lifelong preference for eating sweet things, says Gracner. It can also bring epigenetic changes it says it reduces how well people control their blood sugar levels, increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.
Alternatively, lower caloric intake may explain the health benefits of dieting as a result of eating less sugar, he says. Scott Montgomery At Sweden’s Örebro University, rather than reducing sugar consumption per se. During the diet, people ate 100 fewer calories a day, and dieters had a 30 percent lower risk of developing obesity than dieters, suggesting that calorie restriction played a role. “It might not necessarily be exposure to high sugar levels, it might be something else,” says Montgomery.
Anyway, in the meantime The UK’s recommended dietary guidelines for sugar intake they are similar to the amount eaten in rationing today, the actual consumption is much higher. The results show there are clear benefits to the cuts, Montgomery says. “People should reduce their sugar intake to recommended levels.”
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