Don’t give your kids sugary foods—it speeds up puberty

A sugary diet accelerates a child’s puberty, which can lead to serious health problems in later years.

Children who eat drinks and foods that contain artificial sweeteners start puberty far earlier, say researchers from Taipei Municipal Wan Fang Hospital in Taiwan.  Sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose, and glycyrrhizin cause hormonal changes and gut bacteria imbalances.

Early onset puberty has been tied to serious health consequences later in life, including emotional stress and metabolic disorders, and one type, central precocious puberty, is increasingly common, and can lead to emotional distress, shorter adult height, and increased risk of metabolic and reproductive disorders.

Each sweetener has a different impact on a child’s puberty.  One artificial sweetener, acesulfame potassium or AceK, triggers the release of puberty-related hormones by activating “sweet taste” pathways in brain cells and increases stress-related molecules. Another sweetener, glycyrrhizin—found in liquorice—changes the balance of gut bacteria and reduce the activity of genes involved in triggering puberty.

The researchers have been tracking results from the Taiwan Pubertal Longitudinal Study (TPLS) since 2018, and which includes data from 1,407 teenagers; central precocious puberty has been diagnosed in 481 of them.

Sucralose increases the risk of central precocious puberty in boys, while glycyrrhizin, sucralose and added sugars seems to affect girls more.

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