Early, midday, and late time-restricted eating impact on anthropometry and cardiometabolic health: a network meta-analysis of RCTs

A network meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the effects of early time-restricted eating (eTRE), midday TRE (mTRE), and late TRE (lTRE) on anthropometric and cardiometabolic health, including the impact of exercise (EX), calorie restriction (CR), and control. The analysis included 39 randomized controlled trials with a total of 3,236 participants. Most interventions reduced anthropometric measures compared to control, except for mTRE + EX. eTRE was found to reduce fasting blood glucose levels by an average of −3.64 mg/dL and HOMA-IR by −0.42, compared to the control group. Additionally, eTRE + EX showed a significant reduction in HOMA-IR (MD −1.33). The analysis revealed that eTRE + EX consistently ranked highest according to the surface under the cumulative ranking curve (SUCRA), suggesting a potential role of meal timing in metabolic regulation. However, the certainty of evidence ranged from very low to moderate for most outcomes due to the limited number of trials and variability in study design. The results should be interpreted with caution and further research is needed to confirm these findings.