technologyreview | My bitterness peaked midway through day four
of the “Fast-Mimicking Diet,” when a parent arrived at my daughter’s
softball game with doughnuts. As little girls and fellow coaches crowded
around the box, I stood apart, glumly sipping out of my special water
bottle with its “proprietary” blend of nutrients.
For breakfast, I’d consumed a nut bar the size of a small cracker and a couple of vitamins. Lunch was five olives from Seville.
Frankly, I’d begun to resent Valter Longo, the inventor of Prolon,
the five-day, $250 fad diet causing my misery. True, the Italian-born
biochemist had seemed perfectly nice when I’d reached him at his office
at the University of Southern California’s Longevity
Institute a few days before to speak with him about the science behind
the diet and what it might do for my general health and longevity. He
had patiently explained how the diet would temporarily shift my body
into a starvation state that would prompt my cells to consume years of
accumulated cellular garbage before unleashing a surge of restorative
regeneration. Getting rid of garbage had sounded like just what I
needed. But now I blamed him for my predicament. I wanted a doughnut.
My
Prolon “meal kit” had arrived in a white cardboard container a little
bigger than a shoebox. Inside I’d found a meal program card spelling out
the menu, a large empty water bottle emblazoned with the word “Prolon,”
and five smaller cardboard boxes, each labeled with a corresponding
day. I opened the box for day one, billed as a higher-calorie
“transition day,” and was pleasantly surprised. It didn’t look so bad.
I’d be sampling many of the diet’s highlights: a small packet of kale
crackers, powdered tomato soup blend, algae oil supplements, a bag of
olives, herbal tea, and not one but two nut-based bars (albeit
distressingly small).
When
I opened up day two, however, I began to get a better sense of what I
was in for. One of the puny nut bars had been replaced by a
glycerin-based “energy” drink, which I was instructed to add water to
and sip on throughout the day. There was more herbal tea—hibiscus, mint,
and lemon (I don’t even like herbal tea)—plus a couple more
powdered-soup packs and two tiny packets of olives. Where was the rest of it?
