Beyond dietary restriction: Towards next-generation precision diets for healthy aging
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GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
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PUBLIC SUMMARY
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Diet shapes aging through both the amount of food eaten and the balance and quality of nutrients.
Evidence from animals and human populations shows that nutrition can influence lifespan and healthspan.
Younger adults need enough protein, while older adults may benefit from more plant foods and fiber.
Future diets may be personalized using genes, gut microbes, glucose patterns, and digital monitoring data.
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ABSTRACT
Longevity is governed by complex interactions between genes and environment, in which diet is among the most powerful modifiable determinants. Although classical dietary restriction reliably extends lifespan, evidence from more than thirty large prospective cohorts and meta-analyses summarized in this review indicates that meaningful longevity benefits can be achieved without caloric restriction by optimizing macronutrient composition. This precision-nutrition strategy targets carbohydrate quality, protein sources and specific amino acids, lipid class, and dietary fiber, and adapts these choices to age, sex, genetic background, metabolic phenotype, and gut microbiome composition. This review integrates findings from model organisms, mechanistic investigations, and large-scale prospective cohorts to describe how macronutrients and their combinations modulate lifespan-associated nutrient-sensing pathways. An age-stratified macronutrient framework and a longevity dietary pyramid are proposed, both of which address how nutritional recommendations should evolve from young adulthood through old age. The framework is further situated within a broader precision-nutrition paradigm that incorporates continuous glucose monitoring, multi-omics profiling, microbiome-guided personalization, time-restricted eating, and emerging digital tools such as wearable monitoring and artificial-intelligence-assisted diet design. Together, these elements bridge mechanistic insight and population-level evidence, and provide a foundation for precision diets aimed at extending healthspan and promoting healthy longevity.-
Keywords:
- Precision nutrition /
- Macronutrient optimization /
- Carbohydrate /
- Protein /
- Fat /
- Dietary fiber /
- Healthspan /
- Longevity dietary pyramid
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REFERENCES
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Huang J., Huang D. and Wu Z. (2026). Beyond dietary restriction: Towards next-generation precision diets for healthy aging. The Innovation Nutrition 1:100034. https://doi.org/10.59717/j.xinn-nutri.2026.100034
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Huang J., Huang D. and Wu Z. (2026). Beyond dietary restriction: Towards next-generation precision diets for healthy aging. The Innovation Nutrition 1:100034. https://doi.org/10.59717/j.xinn-nutri.2026.100034
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Figure 1.
Nutritional signaling pathways involved in macronutrient regulation of aging
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Figure 2.
Recommended carbohydrate sources for a longevity diet
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Figure 3.
Recommended protein sources for a longevity diet
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Figure 4.
Recommended fat sources for a longevity diet
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Figure 5.
Recommended fiber sources for a longevity diet
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Figure 6.
A proposed dietary and lifestyle pyramid for longevity
