Key Points
New Delhi: Findings from a landmark study have now shown that a low-sugar diet for pregnant women and infants can remarkably lower the risks of chronic diseases in adulthooda discovery that could boost the growing global demand for cutting down added sugar in baby foods,..
The study, led by Tadeja Gracner of the University of Southern California and published in the journal Science last week, said that children who were subject to sugar restrictions in the first 1,000 days after birth had up to 35 percent lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes and nearly 20 percent reduced risk of hypertension as adults...
While low sugar intake by the mother during the gestational period was enough to lower risks, continued sugar restriction after birth increased the benefits, the study showed...
As part of the research project, scientists used contemporary data from the UK Biobanka biomedical database and research resource of de-identified genetic, health and lifestyle information from over 500,000 UK participants, along with data on disease risk factorsto study the effect of early-life sugar restrictions on health outcomes of adults born in the UK just before and after the end of wartime sugar rationing...
Most importantly, the rationing did not involve extreme food deprivation overall and the diets generally appeared to have been, in fact, within the current guidelines set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the World Health Organization (WHO), which recommend no added sugars for children under two and not more than 10 teaspoons or 50 grammes of added sugar daily for adults...
