Early eating habits could have lasting effects on dementia risk, study suggests

Consuming less sugar during pregnancy and the first years of life may lower the risk of developing dementia decades later, according to new research.

A study published in Neurology found that people who were exposed to less sugar before birth and during their first one to two years of life had up to a 23% lower risk of developing dementia compared with those born after sugar became widely available again.

Researchers examined the health records of more than 64,000 people in the United Kingdom who were born before and after World War II sugar rationing ended in 1953.

People who experienced lower sugar intake before birth and through their first year of life had a 21% lower risk of dementia, while those whose sugar intake remained limited through age two had a 23% lower risk, researchers found.

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The study also found that people with lower sugar exposure early in life developed dementia an average of 2.6 years later than those who consumed more sugar.

“Our findings suggest that limiting sugar during the earliest stages of life may have lasting benefits for brain health,” study author Jiazhen Zheng of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology said in the press release.

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Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, who was not involved in the study, said the research raises an interesting question but cautioned against drawing firm conclusions.

“I’m impressed with the researchers’ creativity, pulling together information across decades to look at this question, but the findings are not convincing,” Mozaffarian told Fox News Digital.

He said many other factors likely differed between people born during and after wartime, including overall nutrition and calorie intake, making it difficult to know whether sugar alone explains the difference.

Still, Mozaffarian said the broader guidance for pregnant women remains the same.

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“Ultimately, we know from other research that women who are pregnant should consume the healthiest foods possible for both their own health and that of their baby,” he told Fox News Digital.

He recommended focusing on minimally processed foods such as fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds, whole grains, fermented dairy products and fish while limiting ultra-processed foods high in sugar, starch and salt.

Researchers stressed that the study found only an association between early-life sugar intake and dementia risk and does not prove that reducing sugar directly prevents the disease.

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Researchers also noted several limitations, including that the study used exposure to a historical rationing policy as a proxy for individual sugar intake and could not eliminate the influence of other differences between the groups.

As a result, the findings cannot establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship between lower sugar intake early in life and a reduced risk of dementia.