Excess sugar consumption is implicated in multiple cancers through insulin resistance, chronic inflammation, and metabolic reprogramming, yet whether early-life sugar exposure causally shapes long-term cancer risk remains an open question. We exploit the abrupt end of United Kingdom sugar rationing in September 1953 as a natural experiment, analyzing 64,761 UK Biobank participants born 1951-1956. Cohorts whose first 1,000 d of life fell under rationing exhibit dose-dependent reductions in adult cancer incidence: liver\/intrahepatic bile duct (IHBD) (hazard ratio 0.31), rectum (HR 0.60), lung (HR 0.59), prostate (HR 0.48), and breast (HR 0.64). We uncover two pathways through which this early-life exposure propagates across the life course. First, a behavioral pathway: Rationed cohorts consume less sugar, eat smaller quantities, and maintain healthier, more diverse diets five decades later, consistent with persistent taste preferences shaped during a critical developmental window. Second, a biological pathway: Rationed cohorts exhibit longer leukocyte telomere length ([Formula: see text]0.05 SD, approximately 2.2 fewer years of biological aging) and lower Granzyme B, indicating reduced chronic immune activation. These findings provide causal evidence linking early-life sugar intake to cancer and identify a behavioral pathway, consistent with persistent taste preferences, through which early nutritional environments may shape lifelong disease risk. The results carry direct implications for early-life nutrition and added-sugar policy.\n <\/p>\n
Keywords:<\/p>\n
behavioral channel; cancer risk; early-life nutrition; natural experiment; sugar rationing.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Excess sugar consumption is implicated in multiple cancers through insulin resistance, chronic inflammation, and metabolic reprogramming, yet whether…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[6947,42347,18715,42345,42344,42348,42349,42350,42351,42365,42352,42363,42362,42364,42361,42353,42354,42355,42359,42360,42343,42358,42356,5,6,42357,42346],"class_list":["post-100469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-adult","tag-aged","tag-aging","tag-chen-zhu","tag-doi10-1073-pnas-2610287123","tag-female","tag-humans","tag-incidence","tag-male","tag-medline","tag-middle-aged","tag-national-center-for-biotechnology-information","tag-national-institutes-of-health","tag-national-library-of-medicine","tag-ncbi","tag-neoplasms-epidemiology","tag-neoplasms-etiology","tag-neoplasms-prevention-control","tag-nih","tag-nlm","tag-pmid42550905","tag-pubmed-abstract","tag-telomere-homeostasis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-kingdom-epidemiology","tag-weilong-zhang"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}