A Chef's Notebook
Food & The 5-Day FMD
9 things I noticed as a chef doing the Prolon 5-Day FMD
I cook for a living, and I have spent years teaching women over 35 how to eat. So when I agreed to do five days of a fasting kit, I went in the way I walk into any kitchen that wants my name on it — looking for what is wrong with it. I took notes the whole week. This is what I actually found.
By Nikki Martin
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Chef & Certified Nutrition Practitioner
·
7 min read
Nikki Martin is a wellness chef and certified nutrition practitioner who helps women 35 and up eat to age smarter. She has cooked on Food Network and been featured in Goop and Bravo.
I have spent most of my life tasting things for a living. So when I agreed to do this, I planned to be a hard grader.
Let me be honest about where I started. When people hear "five-day fast," they picture a week of going without. When a chef hears it, we picture something worse: a box of beige, over-processed health food engineered in a lab and seasoned by someone who has never stood on a hot line. I have tasted that food. I did not want five days of it.
So I want to be clear that I came to the Prolon 5-Day FMD the way I come to any new restaurant or new product I am asked to put my name near: ready to find the flaw. A chef's job, more than anything, is to notice. Seasoning. Texture. Whether someone cared. You cannot turn that off, and I did not try to.
What follows is not the science write-up. I am not a doctor, and the measurable part — what five days of this actually does on the inside, the part they have run the clinical studies and the DEXA scans on — I will leave to the people who study it, and I have put what they have found further down. This is the part I am qualified to talk about: the food, and the nine things I noticed eating it.
No. 1
I expected to hate it
I will start with the bias, because it matters. I opened the first day's box assuming I would be writing a polite version of "it's fine, for what it is." That is the review most food like this earns from me. Edible. Functional. Forgettable.
The reason I am writing nine things instead of that one is that somewhere around the first bowl of soup, I stopped grading on a curve. I started tasting it like food, because it was asking to be tasted like food. That shift — from bracing myself to actually paying attention — is the whole reason this notebook exists.
No. 2
The Carrot Ginger soup is real ginger
This is the one that turned my head first. Most "ginger" in packaged food is a flavor note — a sweet, rounded-off idea of ginger that never actually bites. The Carrot Ginger has the bite. There is a warmth at the back of it that you only get from real ginger doing real work in a pot. I went back and read the ingredients because I genuinely wanted to know if I was being fooled. I was not.
For a cook, that is a tell. You do not get that note by accident, and you do not get it cheaply. Somebody decided the ginger should taste like ginger. Small thing. It told me a lot.
I have spent most of my life tasting things for a living. So when I agreed to do this, I planned to be a hard grader.
No. 3
The kale crackers are seasoned with restraint
Here is a thing only people who cook will care about, so forgive me. The kale crackers are not over-salted. That sounds like a complaint. It is the opposite. The easiest way to make a healthy snack taste like something is to bury it in salt and let the sodium do the work. It is also the laziest. These did not do that. There is enough salt to bring the kale forward and then it stops, on purpose, before it tips over.
Restraint is the hardest thing to teach a young cook. Finding it in a snack inside a fasting kit was not on my list of expectations.
No. 4
There are real olives in the box
Actual olives. Not an olive-flavored thing, not a paste — olives, the ingredient, sitting in a five-day kit like they belong there. They are sourced from Spain and packed in sea salt and extra virgin olive oil, which is exactly why they carry salt, fat, and brightness all at once — the thing a stripped-back day of eating is usually missing. On day two, those olives were the part of the afternoon I looked forward to, and I mean that as real praise.
A day's box, opened. The pieces are simple and recognizable — soups, nut bars, olives, kale crackers, herbal teas.
No. 5
The five soups actually taste like five different things
This was the one I was most ready to catch them on. A lot of programs give you "variety" that is really one base soup wearing five different labels. Same body, same finish, a different vegetable waved over the top.
Not here. Lentil Curry is built around spice and earthiness. Chickpea & Leeks is mellow and savory. Red Bell Pepper & Onion leans sweet. Green Pea & Chives is fresh and bright. The Carrot Ginger I already told you about. They are genuinely distinct dishes, and that matters more than it sounds like it should — because on day four, the thing that makes you want to keep going is having something to look forward to that is not the same bowl you had yesterday.
On day four, the thing that keeps you going is having something to look forward to that is not yesterday's bowl. These soups give you that.
If you have read this far, you are my kind of skeptic. This is the same 5-day program I am writing about, delivered to your door.
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No. 6
Around day three, the food started tasting more vivid
I noticed this the way you notice a room getting quieter. By the third day, the food tasted more vivid. The herbal tea I had been treating as background suddenly had layers. The olives read saltier. The soups read more clearly, each note a little more separated.
I am not going to dress that up as anything more than a cook's observation — I will leave the why to the scientists. All I can tell you is that eating simply for a few days seemed to turn the volume up on flavor rather than down. That is not what I expected from a week of eating lightly.
No. 7
It is "free-from" everything and still eats like food
Plant-based. Gluten-free. Dairy-free. Low glycemic. On paper that is a list of things the food does not have, and food defined by its absences usually tastes like absences. You can feel the missing butter, the missing cream, the missing shortcut.
I could not, really. It eats like food that was designed by someone who wanted it to be good first and compliant second. That order matters. Most "free-from" food gets it backwards.
Plant-based and built around real ingredients — it reads as a bowl of soup, not a list of things left out.
No. 8
It is built so you actually finish it
There is a concept in a professional kitchen called mise en place — everything in its place before service starts. It is the difference between a smooth night and a disaster. The first thing I respected about this kit, before I tasted anything, was that it is mise en place for five days. Each day is its own box. There is an order. There is nothing to weigh, count, plan, or decide at 4 p.m. when your willpower is gone.
That is not a flavor note, but it is the most important thing I noticed, because the best food in the world does nothing for you if the plan falls apart on day two. This one is built so it does not.
And I will answer the question you are actually asking: was I hungry? Sometimes, yes. This is still a fast, and I would not trust a single person who told you that you will not notice it at all. But there was always something to reach for — a soup, the olives, a bar, a tea — so I was never sitting on my hands at 4 p.m. with nothing to eat and no plan. Not stuffed. Not wrecked. That middle is the whole reason you make it to day five.
Five day-boxes, in order. Mise en place for the week — no decisions to make when your willpower is low.
No. 9
The morning after, breakfast tasted incredible
The last thing I noticed happened after the five days were over. That first normal breakfast — a piece of whole grain toast topped with Prolon's L Spread, which is 74% premium Apulian almonds from one of Italy's longevity regions — tasted extraordinary. Bright, full, almost loud. Nothing fancy, and that is the point: whatever sharpening had started on day three was still there, and a plain breakfast walked right into it.
That is the note I keep coming back to. Not anything I can claim about my body. Just that the food on the other side tasted better than it had any right to, and I have been chasing that clarity in my own cooking since.
— Nikki
Nikki Martin, Chef
What is actually happening underneath
Here is the part I will vouch for as a chef before I hand it over: this is not lab food impersonating real food. The company is Italian, and most of what is in the box is sourced from short-supply-chain farms in the Mediterranean's longevity regions — the places people have quietly eaten their way to long lives for generations. You can taste the provenance, and provenance is the thing I am hardest to fool on.
That is where my expertise stops. I can tell you the food is good. I cannot tell you what five days of it does at the cellular level, and I am not going to try. But it is a fair question, and the people who built this program have spent a long time answering it, so here is the part that is theirs, not mine.
The Prolon 5-Day FMD is not a water fast and it is not a cleanse. It is precision nutrition — that same real, Mediterranean-sourced food, formulated so the body stays in a fasting state at the cellular level while you keep eating. In that state the body shifts into autophagy, its natural cellular renewal process, in which older, worn cell components are cleared.1 Prolon is the only nutrition program clinically shown to promote autophagy in humans.1
The program is also shown to support fat-focused weight loss while helping protect lean muscle, with an average loss of about five pounds in a single cycle.2 And after three consecutive monthly cycles, research on the Fasting Mimicking Diet reports a reduction in biological age of up to 2.5 years.2
2.5 years
reduction in biological age reported after three consecutive monthly cycles of the 5-Day FMD
Source: Prolon, citing Fasting Mimicking Diet research2
None of that is why I would tell a friend to try it. I would tell them because the food is genuinely good and the week is genuinely doable. But it is reassuring to know the good food is sitting on top of real science — not the other way around.
25+
Years of research
Decades of studies on longevity and nutrition
40+
Clinical trials
Conducted with world-leading institutions
18
Research institutions
Including USC, Stanford, and Mayo Clinic
200+
Issued or pending patents
For optimizing longevity and healthspan
Developed at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. The Fasting Mimicking Diet originated in Dr. Valter Longo's longevity research and is recommended by more than 20,000 healthcare providers, with over one million customers to date.2
If it were me, here is where I would start
People always ask me which one to get. They all run the same five-day program — the difference is the menu and the format, so here is how I would break it down:
Original — the classics. Minestrone and the soups that built this thing. Start here if you want where it all began.
Next Gen — ready-made, the least amount of work. The one I would hand a friend who tells me they have no time to cook.
Expanded — more variety across the five days, if you are the kind of eater who gets bored of repetition fast.
Bold — the stronger, more assertive flavors. This is where the Lentil Curry and the Carrot Ginger I keep going on about live.
If you want my honest call: do not overthink it. Pick the one whose menu you would actually look forward to finishing, eat the week, and notice what I noticed.
Eat the week. Notice what I noticed. The Prolon 5-Day FMD, delivered to your door — with 90 days to change your mind.
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That's roughly what you'd spend on meals for the week anyway.
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The original powdered soups in familiar flavors: Minestrone, Tomato, Mushroom, Vegetable, and Minestrone Quinoa.
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Sources & notes
Autophagy described as the body's cellular renewal process, in which older or damaged cell components are cleared; Prolon described as the only nutrition program clinically shown to promote autophagy in humans. Per Prolon brand materials and Fasting Mimicking Diet research developed by Dr. Valter Longo at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.
Citation pending
— confirm references and exact claim language with the Prolon team before publishing.
Fat-focused weight loss with lean-muscle protection (average ~5 lbs in one cycle) and biological-age reduction of up to 2.5 years after three consecutive monthly cycles, per Prolon, citing Fasting Mimicking Diet research. Institutional figures (25+ years of research, 47 clinical trials, 18 institutions including USC / Stanford / Mayo Clinic, 200+ patents, 20,000+ providers, 1M+ customers) per Prolon brand materials.
Citation pending
— confirm references and exact claim language with the Prolon team before publishing.
Chef Nikki Martin's observations describe her personal experience of the flavor, texture, and format of the food only. They are not claims about health, medical, or biological outcomes from the Prolon 5-Day FMD. This article is provided for educational purposes. Individual results vary. The Prolon 5-Day Fasting Mimicking Diet is a nutrition program intended to support overall wellbeing; it is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Consult your physician before beginning any fasting or nutrition program, particularly if you are pregnant, nursing, underweight, or managing a medical condition.