Babies Born Under Sugar Rationing Grew Into Adults with Lower Cancer Risk
August 18th, 2026Via: The Conversation:
Could how much sugar you consumed before your second birthday shape your health decades later – even into your 70s?
A new study that my colleagues and I conducted suggests the answer could be yes. People who had less sugar exposure during the first few years of life were much less likely to develop several different cancers later in life, and they also showed signs of slower biological ageing. We also found that even in adulthood, they continued to consume less sugar and had healthier diets overall.
This is not an easy question to study in real life. Researchers obviously can’t run that experiment on real babies – split them into groups, feed one group sugar, then wait 70 years to see what happens.
Britain’s postwar sugar rationing offered a rare alternative. After the second world war, sugar remained rationed in Britain for several years. But in September 1953, rationing ended and people started eating a lot more sugar. Consumption nearly doubled. This meant that children born just a few months apart had very different levels of sugar exposure both in the womb and during early childhood.
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We found that people who experienced longer periods of sugar rationing during their first 1,000 days had a lower incidence of five types of cancer: breast, prostate, liver, rectal and lung cancer. The effect was strongest for liver cancer, where rates were around 69% lower, and weakest – though still substantial – for breast cancer, at 36% lower. Importantly, these differences only began to appear decades after sugar rationing had ended.
Related: “People are finally saying, ‘Oh, they really are trying to kill us.’”
