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Diabetes risk soars for adults who had a sweet tooth as kids

Study of 1950s sugar rationing in the United Kingdom also suggests risk to babies whose mums ate a high-sugar diet during pregnancy.

It’s tough news to hear on Halloween: a sugary diet in the first two years of life is linked to a higher risk of diabetes and high blood pressure decades later, according to an analysis of UK sugar rationing in the 1950s. The results do not mean that pregnant people and parents of young children need to eliminate added sugars from their own diet or their child’s, says Gračner, who works at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. By the time Gračner started her own research group and began piecing together a proposal with her colleagues to study the event, another tool had become available: the UK Biobank, a repository of genetic and medical data from half a million participants.

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