While the debate on the taxation of sugar in processed products is relaunched in the National Assembly, during the examination of the Social Security financing bill, a study published on Thursday, October 31 in Science could give food for thought to the deputies and ministers of the Barnier government, who have expressed divergent opinions on the principle of a new tax and should debate it in the chamber on Monday, November 4.
This study, carried out by American researchers from the universities of Southern California, Chicago and Berkeley, aims to better understand the impact of sugar consumption on the risk of developing chronic diseases, particularly diabetes and hypertension. To characterize this link, the researchers turned to contemporary history and studied a period in which populations experienced a radical change in eating behavior: the lifting of rationing in the United Kingdom in the 1950s.
After the war, most food was rationed. Sugar restrictions were gradually removed in the first half of the 1950s, which limited free sugar intake to less than 40 grams (g) for adults, 15 g for children, and no sugar for babies, approximately the current recommendations of the majority of the public. health agencies – were eliminated in September 1953. Almost immediately, sugar sales doubled in the first year, while for other rationed food consumption levels remained relatively stable, with the only exception being the return to consumption of butter after years of substitution for margarine.
Short term
However, the study published in ScienceThis sudden increase in sugar consumption among the British in 1953 could have had long-term consequences on their health. The researchers relied on data from the UK Biobank, a large medical database that tracks about 500,000 volunteers. Among them, just over 60,000 people were identified who were born between October 1951 and March 1956, a thousand days before the lifting of sugar rationing and a thousand days after.
The researchers thus defined a first group of individuals “rationed” in the womb and during the first months of life, and a second group more exposed to sugar consumption; The overall data available in the UK suggests a doubling of consumption. . This short period of time was chosen by hypothesizing that these two groups of individuals were exposed to a relatively similar food environment, with constant prices, and that exposure to sugar constitutes the main differentiating variable.
You have 45.22% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
