A study analysing data from the UK Biobank suggests that reduced sugar exposure in early childhood, during postwar rationing, may have long-term mental health benefits, including a lower risk of anxiety and depression in adulthood.
Researchers analysing a rare postwar sugar-rationing cohort have found that people exposed to lower sugar intake before birth and in the first two years of life appeared to have a reduced risk of anxiety and depression decades later, according to a study accepted for publication in Translational Psychiatry.
The work drew on UK Biobank data from people born between October 1951 and March 1956, when Britain was still recovering from wartime food controls. The researchers compared adults who were exposed to rationing for different lengths of time with those conceived after all food rationing had ended, creating a natural experiment that tracked how early nutrition may have shaped later health.
They reported that the clearest protective associations were seen in those exposed for the longest periods. Adult sugar consumption was broadly similar across the groups, but the longest-exposed participants recorded slightly lower scores for sweet-food liking. The study also found differences in grey matter volume on brain scans, although the authors said those imaging findings did not explain the mental health results.
The analysis, which included more than 46,000 participants, also suggested that the anxiety finding held up even after later-life sugar intake was taken into account, while the depression link became weaker. The researchers cautioned that the study was observational and cannot prove that early sugar restriction directly improves mental health, because other differences between generations could have influenced the outcome.
Their findings fit into a wider body of research suggesting that nutrition in the first 1,000 days after conception may have long-term consequences for physical and mental health. Other studies have linked early-life sugar restriction to lower risks of chronic disease, obesity and even dementia, while work from the National Bureau of Economic Research has associated high sugar exposure in childhood with worse health and lower socioeconomic attainment later in life.
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