Fox 11 LA quoted USC Leonard Davis School Professor Valter Longo about using fasting-mimicking diets to defy aging. “The job of diet is to kill off damaged cells and a lot of cellular components that are damaged, and then turn on stem cells and replace damaged components with new components,” Longo said. “If you can live 10 years longer, but you can now eliminate diseases, whether it’s Alzheimer’s or cancer or cardiovascular disease, that’s really the goal.”