Babies born under sugar rationing grew into adults with lower cancer risk

I first heard of the connection between breast cancer rates and performing use more than a decade ago, and it took a lot to convince me it was true, but a lot of it was seeing the connection the the insulin receptor protein. Here they find a list of cancer types that could seem connected to sugar, especially the liver, but it still leaves lots of questions for me.

The bookmakers measured here are quite different, like telomere length.

> We found that people who experienced sugar rationing early in life still consumed less sugar in adulthood, around age 50. They also ate less overall, and their diets were healthier and more diverse. This suggests that the level of sweetness people are exposed to very early in life may shape their taste preferences for a long time.

This life long behavior makes the connection far more plausible than an effect from just 1000 days at the beginning of life! But they can't lead with something so mundane, I guess..

This is science in formation, not established fact, so it's interesting to see an article about it aimed at a popular audience. Definitely something to keep an eye on, but the conclusions shouldn't be filed away as established facts quite yet.

The article mentions several times that early sugar exposure affects sugar craving for a lifetime. Did they correct for that? I.e. people born during sugar rationing who later developed normal sugar consumption patterns compared to people not born during rationing who consume similar amounts?

I was born into a traditional food culture without excessive sugar, but I sure as heck developed a sugar craving later, to the detriment of my diet. I'm guessing this cancels out the early healthy effect.

While I want to believe the result, it seems like the method is far too susceptible to confounding cohort effects. I'd be curious if a similar trend is seen in other countries that ended rationing at different times, and if any such change is seen in countries that didn't ration. The cancer rates may not be directly comparable due to other differences, but if the rate change is consistently centered around whenever sugar consumption changed, that would be much more compelling evidence; whereas if post-1953 children have higher cancer rates across the board it's probably something else.

Time to dust off this oldie but goodie:

Correlation is not causation.

If you don't see the article's link to the research - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2610287123 (yes, paywalled):

"Sugar rationing" is far too simplistic a description of the historical situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdo...