1y ago

Apart from water and salt, are there any inorganic foods?

An overwhelming majority of what we eat is made from plants and animals. This means that composition of our almost entire food is chemicals from the realm of organic chemistry (carbon-based large molecules). Water and salt are two prominent examples of non-organic foodstuffs - which come from the realm of inorganic chemistry. Beside some medicines is there any more non-organic foods? Can we eat rocks, salts, metals, oxides... and I just don't know that?

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68 comments

It depends on what you mean by "eat." Does being able to survive them traveling through your digestive tract count as "eating" something? Does it have to have nutritional value? If the former, any inorganic substance with a low enough LD50 in a low enough dose would count. If it actually has to have nutritional value, youre limited to minerals like Calcium Carbonate (chalk and this isnt organic despite Carbon being in its composition), Potassium Chloride (no salt), Magnesium Oxide (milk of magnesia), Iron Sulfate etc. and any inorganic derivative that has relatively low toxicity.
- Calcium carbonate is inorganic because it doesn’t contain hydrogen. Organic compound must have both carbon and hydrogen atoms.
  Edit- more specifically the hydrogen and carbon should be covalently bonded and there are still a few exceptions as noted by other comments below.
  
  That’s a false statement. It needs to have carbon-hydrogen non-ionic bonds for it to be organic. Think carbonic acid vs a ketone of some sort.
  
  Not really completely false just missing a piece of information- ie I should have mentioned they be bonded but carbonic acid and ketones are both organic compounds so I’m not sure what you’re trying to say there.
  Edit: carbonic Acid is not because there are no C-H bonds.
  
  Carbonic acid is not organic.
  
  According to Wikipedia it is- but I agree after looking at its structure that it is not.
  There are no carbon-hydrogen covalent bonds in the structure.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid#:~:text=In%20chemistry%2C%20carbonic%20acid%20is,quite%20stable%20at%20room%20temperature.
  
  Calcium carbonate is inorganic because it is a simple salt. Containing hydrogen has nothing to do with it. Ca(HCO3)2 is just as inorganic.
  If you think a molecule needs to contain both H and C to be organic, then fully halogenated propane is inorganic, but as soon as one of the 8 halogen atoms is not substituted it suddenly is organic again. This gets even more absurd with larger molecules like oleic acid C18H34O2. 34 chlorine replacing all H? Inorganic. 33? Organic.
  
  None of those compounds would be stable. Theoretically you’re making a good point for an exception to C-H bonds defining organic chemistry but I bet all of your fully halogenated compounds would degrade and break apart until some number of hygrogens replace the halogens to make it stable.
  Point taken tho.
  
  What do you mean would not be stable...? They are more stable than then hydrogenated versions. PTFE is essentially only C and F in endless chain of [CF2].
  
  Organic compounds don't have a strict consensus based definition today. So any matter of fact statement isn't widely held any longer. It's just one school of thought so to speak.
  
  You’re right- primarily because science changes as new things are discovered and therefore the definition changes.
  I still think the definition I learned with C-H covalent bonds indicating organic has fewer exceptions than other definitions.

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