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Nutrition: From Myth and Magic to Science

This paper provides a historical and educational perspective on the contributions of nutrition to public health. It outlines briefly the evolution of nutrition from its origins in hunting and food-gathering to its development as a branch of biological science and as an applied medical science. It selects only a few examples of contributions from the field to illustrate nutrition's role in improving public health. It addresses the dichotomy that exists today between scientific knowledge of nutrition and popular, often pseudoscientific, views of the subject and presents some thoughts on the reasons for the coexistence of such divergent and incompatible views. It concludes with some discussion of the concept that general diet modification is an appropriate public health policy for reducing the incidence of chronic and degenerative diseases and, thereby, the costs of medical care; and of the issues programs based on this concept raise in relation to the use of scientific knowledge of nutrition.