Ten healthy dietary patterns were linked to slower biological aging, suggesting that eating for healthy aging can accommodate different tastes and traditions.
Mediterranean, Nordic, and plant-based diets offer different ways to eat healthily, yet a study by DZNE found that all three were linked to slower biological aging. The association appeared across all 10 dietary patterns the researchers examined, including DASH, a diet designed to help lower blood pressure. The team assessed aging through chemical changes in DNA that occur over a person’s lifetime.
The findings, published in Nature Communications, draw on blood samples and dietary information from about 7,500 women and men. Researchers first identified the results among 6,470 participants in DZNE’s Rhineland Study in Bonn. They independently confirmed the key findings using data from 1,034 participants in the EPIC-Potsdam Study, run by the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbrücke (DIfE).
No single standard for healthy eating
Rather than assigning each person to a single diet, the researchers scored everyone’s eating habits against the recommendations of all 10 patterns. Each score reflected how closely a participant’s food choices matched that particular diet.
“One and the same person could therefore rank high on one diet score and low on another. In other words: People who ate healthily by one standard were often not the same people who ate healthily by another. According to our data, hardly anyone counts as a healthy eater by every standard at once,” says Juliana Tavares, a doctoral researcher at DZNE and the study’s lead author.
Higher scores were nevertheless associated with slower biological aging under every dietary pattern studied. For Prof. Monique Breteler, Director of Population Health Sciences at DZNE and head of the Rhineland Study, that leaves people with choices.
“Importantly, there is probably no single ‘correct’ diet. According to our data, various dietary patterns are associated with slower aging, some more, some less. That is an encouraging finding, because it leaves room to tailor healthy eating to personal and cultural preferences, budget, and taste.”
The aging link was strongest in smokers
The strength of the association also varied among participants. It was most pronounced in smokers, even though they did not eat more healthily than nonsmokers. The researchers do not yet know the biological reason for that difference.
“Smoking is very harmful to health,” says Tavares, “One explanation for our findings might be that there is just more health benefit to gain for smokers by eating healthy because of the enormous detrimental effects of smoking.”
Different diets share biological pathways
To assess biological aging, the researchers analyzed DNA methylation, chemical modifications to DNA that influence gene activity. These modifications change systematically over a lifetime, allowing researchers to use their patterns as molecular indicators of aging.
“We applied three different approaches, so-called epigenetic clocks, to read biological aging from DNA methylation,” explains Tavares. “To this end, we leveraged state-of-the-art technology, which allowed us to cover about 850,000 sites in the DNA. This is roughly twice as many as in most previous studies.”
Each dietary pattern was associated with a distinct set of methylation sites. But when the researchers examined the biological pathways connected to those sites, meaning related processes within cells, they found considerable overlap.
“More than 70 percent of the affected biological pathways were shared across all diets. These involve cell structure, cell signaling and metabolism—processes central to aging and chronic disease. Therefore, it is understandable that the dietary patterns we examined were all linked with a slowing of biological aging,” says Tavares.
“While there are measurably differences between the diets, they are modest in absolute terms. It’s the big picture what matters,” she says. “In summary: When it comes to slowing down the aging process, there isn’t just one healthy diet, but indeed a whole repertoire of possible diets with a positive effect.”
The analysis establishes associations between eating habits and molecular markers of aging. It does not, by itself, show that the diets caused aging to slow or reduced participants’ risk of disease. Breteler places the findings in the broader context of prevention.
“Our study suggests that healthy eating goes hand in hand with slower biological aging. The effects are not massive, but they are measurable and relevant for prevention. By slowing the aging process, the risk of age-related diseases such as dementia or cardiovascular disorders can be reduced. Thus, healthy eating contributes to healthy aging,” she says.
Alongside the shared biological pathways, the analysis identified differences that could help researchers investigate whether particular eating patterns have more targeted effects. Tavares explains:
“A few pathways were diet-specific, and they matched each diet’s main objectives: heart-related pathways were unique to the DASH diet, and pathways related to cognition and memory were unique to the so-called MIND diet, which aims to support brain health. You don’t need a perfect diet — that may be the most practical message here. But moving forward, the diet-specific pathways point to future research on targeted dietary interventions. This could be helpful in designing targeted health recommendations.”
Reference: “Associations between diet quality, epigenetic aging and epigenome in two population-based cohorts” by Juliana F. Tavares, Dan Liu, Valentina Talevi, Fabian Eichelmann, Franziska Jannasch, Matthias B. Schulze, N. Ahmad Aziz, Ute Nöthlings and Monique M. B. Breteler, 29 August 2026, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-77064-4
This work was supported through the Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the Diet-Body-Brain Competence Cluster in Nutrition Research (grant numbers 01EA1410C and 01EA1809C) and in the framework “PreBeDem – Mit Prävention und Behandlung gegen Demenz” (grant number 01KX2230), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy (EXC 2151—390873048), and through SFB1454—project number 432325352, and the Helmholtz Association under the 2023 and 2024 Innovation Pool.
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