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Limiting sugar intake in the first two years of life has lasting benefits for the heart into adulthood, new research suggests. Experts found that people were less likely to suffer conditions such as heart attack, heart failure and stroke if they had little sugar in early childhood and if their mothers had little sugar in pregnancy. The research team looked at data from wartime sugar rationing in more than 63,000 people from the UK Biobank, using this data as a proxy for sugar intake. The study included around 40,000 people exposed to sugar rationing - which lasted from 1940 to 1953 - and nearly 24,000 who were not. Health records were examined for conditions such as heart disease, heart attack, heart failure, irregular heartbeat, stroke, and death as a result of these conditions. Compared with people never exposed to rationing, those who had sugar restricted during the time of pregnancy and in the first two years of life had a 20 per cent lower risk of heart disease, 25 per cent lower risk of heart attack, 26 per cent lower risk of heart failure, atrial fibrillation (24 per cent), stroke (31 per cent), and cardiovascular death (27 per cent). The team, including from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the School of Medicine in Boston in the US, concluded: "The first 1,000 days after conception are a critical window when nutrition shapes lifelong cardiometabolic risk. "Many infants and toddlers consume excess added sugars via maternal diet, formula, and early solids…Early-life sugar restriction was associated with lower risks of (heart attack), heart failure, atrial fibrillation, stroke, and cardiovascular mortality." During rationing, sugar allowances for everyone - including pregnant women and children - were limited to under 40g per day. No added sugars were given to babies under two. The research found there was even a link between longer exposure to sugar rationing and progressively lower heart risks, partly due to less diabetes and lower blood pressure. People also experienced more time without heart problems - up to two-and-a-half years - than those who never experienced rationing. However, some experts are critical of the results. Prof Gunter Kuhnle, Professor of Nutrition and Food Science, University of Reading, said: "The authors used the food environment as a proxy to infer sugar intake. While the paper clearly states that they are interested in exposure to sugar rationing…parts of the paper imply that exposure to sugar rationing is largely equivalent to sugar intake – but this is an assumption that is not supported by any evidence. "Sugar rationing will have an impact on sugar intake, but this impact will vary largely between individuals – it is therefore impossible to make any inferences about sugar intake of individuals." While it is "plausible" that there is a causal relationship between lower sugar consumption on cardiovascular disease risk, Dr Stephen Burgess, Statistician at the University of Cambridge, says this is not the only possible explanation. "For instance, it could be that there was another generational shift around the ending of sugar rationing that is the responsible factor. However, similar differences in disease risk were not observed for diseases that are not thought to be consequences of early life sugar consumption," Dr Burgess added. While the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends reducing the intake of free sugars to less than 10 per cent of total energy intake in both adults and children, experts agree that more research is needed to fully understand the effects of sugar consumption in early life on heart health risks. The study was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) .
