Everyone wanted a pill to take but the proven answers to reducing adverse outcomes is to reduce air pollution, lose weight, do everything you can to get your heart into shape by sleeping well, eating well, reducing stress, and exercising.
There are significant biological differences - for instance, when you restrict calories your metabolism slows down as much as 15-25% over the first three weeks (hence the plateau many dieters experience). Fasting on the other hand raises your metabolic rate up to ~15% for the first 5 days of a water fast. Further, production of HGH is inhibited by consuming any food and while fasting it can increase 3-12X. Autophagy is inhibited by the consumption of any protein (via mTOR).
If you want to treat fasting as the special case diet where input=0, I certainly understand that. However, the physiological processes of caloric restriction are quite different than total abstention.