Funviralpark Two economists want the US government to pursue the food industry in the same way it did tobacco companies. Lifetime health and wage outcomes.
Two economists at the University of California, Berkeley and RAND Corp. took advantage of the 1953 end of the sugar and candy rationing in the United Kingdom to prevent children under the age of five from eating too much sugar. I studied what happens in the year.researcher their publications Preprint result WhenNational Bureau of Economic Research.
“Currently, most of the research looks at the contemporaneous effects of excessive sugar consumption,” says Paul Gertler, a co-author of the study and professor of economics at the University of California. We wanted to see this long-term life perspective.”
the researcher was able Compare the results of people born just a few years apart but with very different amounts of sugar in their diets. However, consumption of other foods did not change.
Researchers looked at children whose parents had similar health conditions and who had similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Post-ratio adults were more likely to develop chronic inflammation, diabetes, arthritis, and other long-term illnesses.
In addition to health effects, too much sugar in childhood affected children’s school performance and earnings as adults.Adults born after People whose rationing ended were 18.5% less likely to go to college and 16.6% less likely to get a highly skilled job. This also meant that adults born after rationing were less likely to accumulate wealth than their older peers.
Economists recommended that governments intervene to prevent pregnant and breastfeeding women and young children from eating too much sugar.
“Over the last 10 to 15 years, the food industry has introduced a ton of new sugary foods and beverages.There is this new product category called infant beverages,” says Gertler. “At this age, under 2, the recommended sugar intake is zero. Here we have foods with 20% he sugar to 40% he.”
