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Unhealthful diets are strongly linked to health problems, including obesity, cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Past efforts to improve population diet centered on conveying the importance of nutrition and nutrition knowledge. This study examines if the effect of the knowledge of specific nutrient’s function on dietary behavior is mediated by motivation towards better health. Survey data used in this study was obtained via a web-panel survey that was conducted by Ipsos-Observer. We employed the mediation analysis method that is established in the literature. We find that motivation mediates the influence of the knowledge of nutrients’ function on dietary behaviors. Individuals with high health-motivation and higher levels of the knowledge of nutrients’ dietary functions exhibit healthier dietary behaviors than individuals with low-health motivation but high levels of nutrients’ functional knowledge. Furthermore, individuals with health problems exhibited higher motivation to maintain healthy diet. A key implication is that efforts to promote healthy dietary behaviors should consider motivation in addition to providing tools, such as nutrients’ functional knowledge and nutrition labels. Simply conveying the importance of nutrition itself may not be enough to motivate people to affect diet changes. Educating about the specific role of nutrients’ in human health might motivate more individuals to modify diet.