this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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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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[–] Magiccupcake@startrek.website 76 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Calcium carbonate, is the main ingredient in tums, and is the main component of limestone.

[–] EmoDuck@sh.itjust.works 37 points 1 year ago (5 children)

But limes are organic, so shouldn't limestone also count as organic?

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[–] FarceMultiplier@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

FWIW, most of our use of it comes from organic sources I believe.

[–] Grimr0c@lemmy.world 50 points 1 year ago

What a fascinating question! I hadn't previously considered this.

[–] ParsnipWitch@feddit.de 41 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That our diet stems from mostly molecules described in organic chemistry can also be the direct result of the fact that there are vastly more molecules considered "organic": about 19 million are known and the number is growing!

While for anorganic compounds, there are only about 100,000.

The separation into organic and inorganic chemistry is really only done to make it easier to talk about broader subjects in science. We need and use obviously a lot of compounds that aren't carbon based large molecules.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Baking soda is also an inorganic compound.

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[–] fiat_lux@kbin.social 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can we eat rocks, salts, metals, oxides… and I just don’t know that?

You'll die without Iron, Calcium, Potassium, Magnesium, Zinc etc. in your diet. Your body relies on a lot of metals and salts to function.

You can see an example of a food's breakdown here to see all the metals and salts involved in foods: Nutrition data for rice (make sure you scroll to the "Detailed Nutrition Data" section and expand the categories like "Minerals")

Fun fact, calcium supplements are Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3) - literally chalk. But for metals which are deliberately added to food, check out the Lucky Iron Fish developed to address anaemia in Cambodia.

[–] pjhenry1216@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean... it seemed like a good idea and all, but it didn't help Cambodia. It's like only a couple paragraphs down in your link. It only addresses iron-deficiency based anemia which was not the main cause of anemia in Cambodia.

[–] fiat_lux@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sure, but it still works for actual iron deficiencies, even if that wasn't the anaemia cause Cambodians were dealing with.

I'm actually considering buying one for myself, I mostly eat vegetarian foods.

[–] keenanpepper@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cooking in a cast iron pan will give you even more iron.

[–] fiat_lux@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

True, but they're very heavy and I can't just throw cast iron in the dishwasher.

[–] xkforce@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Radio_717@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] Beardliest@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] pjhenry1216@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] Ertebolle@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

A number of food additives don't contain any carbon atoms; if you follow the links from the Wikipedia article on food additives you can find a bunch, for example sodium bisulfate which is a color retention agent.

There are also some interesting cases like the antifoaming agent Polydimethylsiloxane (found in trace amounts in, among other things, Chicken McNuggets) which I believe is technically a hybrid organic/inorganic polymer.

[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

Technically, e coli counts as organic.

[–] pjhenry1216@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

If you're asking if you could survive off only non-organic, than no. Your body won't generate energy from those things. Broadly fat, carbs, and proteins are the primary sources (there are others, but they can mostly be shoe-horned into one of those or they're insignificant sources).

You also need a better definition of "food." You can ingest a lot of things that are considered inorganic and not die, but that doesn't make them food. You'll still essentially die of malnutrition though. So your body will still starve, so I guess you could use that as part of the definition of food I suppose. But then salt doesn't count as a food anymore, neither does water (but that makes sense at least... water has never been considered a food really).

I think you're using a lot of words that have ambiguous meanings that folks don't usually think about and that's going to affect a lot of answers.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Edible clay is something that is actually sold as a product for people to eat. It's not metaphoric. It is exactly what it sounds like.

[–] Devi@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

There's an MLM that just sells mud, then people eat the mud. I don't understand.

[–] ValiantDust@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

In recent years, activated charcoal.

(Because many people apparently don't know this: Don't eat activated charcoal if you take any medication, it can render your medication ineffective)

Edit: Wait, I'm dumb, charcoal is very much carbon-based.

[–] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Edit: Wait, I’m dumb, charcoal is very much carbon-based.

I think that it still fits. People don't usually consider amorphous carbon, diamonds, graphite or fullerene as "organic", even if carbon-based.

[–] ValiantDust@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have to admit, chemistry has been a while and I don't remember the exact definitions of organic vs inorganic chemistry, so I just went off the "carbon-based" in the OP.

[–] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

The textbook definition is something like "carbon covalently linked to other junk". (The other junk is usually hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur.) So it usually excludes [macro]molecules made exclusively of carbon, like those.

[–] Radio_717@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Charcoal and activated charcoal are not amorphous carbon compounds because their structures contain other elements than just carbon.

[–] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a fair point - you're right that typically charcoal does have bits of hydrogen and oxygen, to the point that its empirical formula is around C₇H₄O, so by textbook definition it is organic. However I think that it falls into a grey area due to the relatively small amount of the "other components", and perhaps because of the structure?

[–] Radio_717@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Im finding that people have strong opinion on what qualifies as organic. Haha.

I think it’s cool I can talk to people about chemistry outside of work tho. None of my friends understand anything about what I do for a living.

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[–] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Hydrochloric acid, sodium hydroxide: common food additives to balance its pH. Technically included by the OP, as they're made from water and salt.

Silica: another common food additive (anticaking agent). Arguably "not food" because your body will simply poop it, undigested.

Metallic iron: if you're cooking in a metallic pot, some of the metal leaks into the food. Actually good in this case as iron is an essential mineral.

Metallic lead [historical]: the Romans used lead pots quite a bit, specially to boil either vinegar or barely fermented wine (mustum). The result is extremely sweet due to lead acetate, the first artificial sweetener that I'm aware of ...and extremely toxic. (OK, it's a partially organic salt due to the acetate anion, but still.)

Calcium carbonate: already mentioned by another user. It's essential to nixtamalise maize, but it's also used for stuff like candied pumpkin cubes.

[–] roguetrick@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Many minerals that are quite essential are used by other organisms so we get it that way, but that doesn't mean we have to. A good example is iron. Rust isn't a bioavailable form of iron compared to what you'd get from plants and animals, but you could eat rust and make some of the iron in it ferric chloride that you could then use for making hemoglobin. It's just not very efficient. What you can't do is get energy from inorganic molecules. We can only get energy from things on the citric acid cycle(or are made up of components of it), alcohols, sugars, fats, and proteins.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Bicarbonate soda, used heavily in baking. Vinegar (acetic acid as opposed to natural fermentation)

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

acetic acid is organic, as in, it is an organic compound

[–] AmidFuror@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Bicarbonate is also organic.

Edit: I found a source that says an organic compound must have a carbon-hydrogen bond. I knew CO and CO2 were inorganic, but more as an exception.

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[–] Dmian@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ve seen gold leaf put in food. It doesn’t hurt your body, apparently, but I guess you take nothing of value from it.

[–] _thebrain_@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

If you eat enough you will eventually develop gold plated poo 4-12 hours later, and I think that is something!

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