Abstract
The effects of dietary rhythms on organ-specific biological aging remain unclear. This study analyzed 14,012 adults from NHANES to assess associations between dietary rhythms and biological aging of the body, heart, liver, and kidneys. Earlier last meals, specifically before 9 p.m., were linked to lower aging risks for the body, heart, and liver but not kidneys. The strongest protective effects were seen with meals between 3 and 5 p.m. for the body and heart, and 5–7 p.m. for the liver. Conversely, later first meals and longer feeding durations (>8 h) linked to higher aging risks. These associations were modified by age, gender, disease status, caloric intake and dietary quality, with effects more pronounced in individuals over 40, males, and those without existing diseases or with low calorie intake. Delayed first and earlier last meal remained significantly associated with body and liver aging in the healthy diet group, whereas heart aging showed stronger associations with meal time in the unhealthy diet group. This study revealed optimal meal timing and duration differ for biological aging across different organs, ages, genders, disease status, energy intake, and dietary quality, highlighting a critical food-nutrient-timing synergy, and the need for personalized nutritional guidance and population-specific dietary strategies.
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Data availability
Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. The data can be found here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/index.htm.
Code availability
The underlying code for this study is not publicly available but may be made available to qualified researchers on reasonable request from the corresponding author.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the staff and the participants of the NHANES study for their valuable contributions. We appreciate Professors Zheng Lin and Jingrong Shi for their statistical analysis expertise. This work was supported by the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (Grant number: 81800364); Fujian Research and Training Grants for Young and Middle-aged Leaders in Healthcare; Fujian Provincial Health Commission Young and Middle-aged Key Talent Training Program (Grant number: 2025GGA003); the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian (Grant number 2025J01081).
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Meixia Ren: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing—Review & Editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Fan Lin: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing—Review & Editing, Supervision. Luyan Zheng: Software, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing- Original draft preparation, Visualization. Zhilong Jia: Visualization, Software, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing—Original draft preparation, Investigation. Shuanghui Gong, Tian Zheng, Yizhou Zhuang, Lan Lin, Qianwen Li: Investigation.
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Zheng, L., Jia, Z., Gong, S. et al. Dietary rhythms and biological aging risk across multiple organs. npj Sci Food (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41538-026-00799-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41538-026-00799-3
