Study Confirms the Awesome Destructive Power of Sugar in Utero

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.

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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.

Via Science.org (emphasis added):

“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%.

Via Science.org (emphasis added):

“We examined the impact of sugar exposure within 1000 days since conception on diabetes and hypertension, leveraging quasi-experimental variation from the end of the United Kingdom’s sugar rationing in September 1953. Rationing restricted sugar intake to levels within current dietary guidelines, yet consumption nearly doubled immediately post-rationing. Using an event study design with UK Biobank data comparing adults conceived just before or after rationing ended, we found that early-life rationing reduced diabetes and hypertension risk by about 35% and 20%, respectively, and delayed disease onset by 4 and 2 years. Protection was evident with in-utero exposure and increased with postnatal sugar restriction, especially after six months when solid foods likely began. In-utero sugar rationing alone accounted for about one third of the risk reduction.”

Of course, life is all about choices.

You can either cut the sugar out, or Respect the Science™, take the more conventional approach, and throw your kid on the Ozempic treadmill when he sprouts tits because you’ve been mainlining sugar and pseudo-sugar into his arteries — or else you’ve allowed the public school system to under your nose.

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Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

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