I’m probably preaching to the choir, but keep the bullshit away from your babies, ladies, if you love them — especially when they’re still in your bellies.
The study referenced in the title of this article, though imperfect in its design, takes reasonably thorough public health data (no one ever accused the British of failing to keep meticulous enough records) from WWII-era sugar rationing and compares it to the data immediately after the war when the restrictions were lifted.
In 1953, the United Kingdom got its sweet tooth back, ending the rationing of candies and sugar that had begun during World War II. Hordes of people descended on candy stores and started to sweeten more of their foods at home. Within the year, the nation’s sugar consumption doubled.
Now, a team of researchers has turned this sharp shift in the British diet into a vivid demonstration of how sugary diets in early life undermine long-term health. Combining food surveys and sugar sales from the 1950s with medical records of adults from the UK Biobank database, the team found that people conceived or born after 1953 had higher risks of type 2 diabetes and hypertension decades later than those born during rationing…
“It’s a fascinating study,” says Edward Gregg, an epidemiologist at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. “Although we know … sugar influences diabetes risk, to have a natural experiment like this wherein you have a whole population under a [dietary] restriction, followed by a dramatic change and in turn a big impact on diabetes and hypertension, I think is pretty profound.””
They discovered through their analysis that merely limiting to sugar to within current recommended dietary guidelines reduced diabetes risk by a staggering 35% and high blood pressure by 20%