It’s not such sweet news.
Diet and mental health are linked, with research showing that what we eat is linked to the development of issues like depression and anxiety.
And one study in particular has found early exposure to a popular food could cause anxiety later in life.
Decades of research have linked sugar to several adverse health effects in children: metabolic diseases, behavioral disorders and hyperactivity, tooth decay and childhood obesity.
And now, one more can be added to the list: anxiety.
Based on previous work linking sugary foods and mental health issues, researchers from the University of Surrey wanted to explore how dietary behavior influenced a person’s mental health into adulthood.
“We were specifically interested in understanding if having sugar in early life could contribute to incidences of mental health issues such as depression and anxiety later in life,” lead study author Dr Hana Navratilova said in a press release.
Analyzing medical data of over 45,000 UK Biobank participants, they found that exposure to sugar in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life increases the risk of developing anxiety in adulthood.
They also found that sugar intake in early life significantly impacted brain development in 11 out of the 80 regions of the brain.
Participants were divided into groups of those who experienced sugar rationing in utero, as well as up to six, 12, 18 and 24 months of age, and those who underwent rationing in utero only.
The risk of developing anxiety was lowest in those who were not significantly exposed to sugar in utero and during the first two years of life.
Women who were not limited in how much sugar they were exposed to at a young age were also more likely to develop anxiety.
And sugar exposure could influence diet in the long run, as those who were not exposed to sugar for the longest time (in utero and up to 24 months of age) reported a lower preference for sweet food as adults.
“Despite increased sugar consumption after rationing amongst participants, early nutritional environments appear to have lasting relevance for mental health,” study author Professor Nophar Geifman said in a press release.
One of the influencing factors of the data was the fact that the participants were born between 1951 and 1956, when post-war sugar rationing was still fully in place and through to when it was phased out.
This time period was unique in that “so many people did not have excess sugar in their diets and then had it slowly phased in over a prolonged period of time,” according to Geifman.
Major health organizations, including the Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services, recommend that kids should consume under 25 grams of sugar per day.
However, many are eating much more, consuming about 68 to 81 grams, thanks to ultra-processed foods like cookies, ice cream, sweetened drinks and more.
Previous research has also found a strong link between unhealthy food and increased risk of depression, with artificial sweeteners and artificially sweetened beverages having the most impact on the chances of mental health issues.
