What is interesting from a scientific point of view, and this is one subject we know a lot more about than actual nutrition, is why people who are otherwise sci

What is interesting from a scientific point of view, and this is one subject we know a lot more about than actual nutrition, is why people who are otherwise scientific minded skeptics are superstitious when it comes to nutrition (if you believe that eating more green vegetable or less, consuming more vitamin C or less, more saturated fat or less is actually better for you, then you are superstitious, unless you are knowingly placing a scientifically unfounded bet on one diet over another). I think you're too loosely using the terms "superstition" and "magic". This is Merriam-Webster's definition of superstition: 1 a : a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation b : an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition 2 : a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary There are indeed diets that are superstitiously motivated (don't eat pork because it's an impure animal, don't eat cows cause they're sacred, etc), but you're throwing everything in the same pot, liking religious motives and decisions by rational minds to eat or omit certain food items, based on observations and deductions (albeit sometimes limited and flawed) of effect and causality. If anything, the latter is but an attempt at building a framework toward a saner nutrition. If we were to listen to you, we should wait until everything has been discovered about food and physiology to start making up our minds as to what is good or bad to ingest. At which point I guess what you keep calling "magic" then becomes science. This tendency of wanting to be absolute is a bit naive. No body of knowledge works like that. Just because our understanding of a topic is patchy, doesn't exempt some connections to be made that can be built upon to stitch up a gradual and more complete understanding. Which, if I observe how nutrition has evolved, is exactly what's happening. Nothing magic there.