Yes, biology is not as simple. With mTOR inhibition fasting is not a full story. mTOR is a sensor of food (amino acids) and a master regulator of growth signals. mTOR is inhibited naturally by fasting and artificially by drugs like rapamycin. And rapamycin is currently a winner in life/health extension across species (Matt Kaerbelin, Rich Miller from theDrive podcast). So with rapamycin inhibiting mTOR (or other fasting mimetic drugs) it's enough to only _send_a_signal_ of low energy/food to the biosystem to obtain gains in health and reverse biological time. So your analogy fits best here, as you are only using signals.

While with fasting it is a reduction of actual food/fuel. Garbage collection can be comparable to fasting-induced autophagy, but in fasting it is also an absence of growth signals like IGF-1 that provides gains in health function (though Greg Fahy research on thymus regeneration in humans with a mix including a growth hormone may contradict this).

The majority of Levin's work in developmental biology done in embryos, which are naturally a highly flexible tissue and naturally express high levels of Yamanaka genes, which are now used for epigenetic reprogramming (OSK). Growing eyes on the tadpole's tail is cool, but I want to grow a tooth for myself now.