Do they literally mean zero intake of calories for 72 hours? That sounds like a long time. How do you prepare for that nutrition wise and mentally? People eat at night during the ramadan.
So no food, but water was allowed.
Just remember the context: the mice were subjected to chemotherapy schedules... so it's not like "hey take healthy mice, fast them and see them get healthy", but more like "hey take healthy mice, fast them, subject them to chemotherapy, and look... their immune system responds better than if we allowed them to eat pre-chemo" (apologies if I summarised this wrong)