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?
Taco Bell.
Lots of vitamins and additives are fairly simple chemistry. C vitamin for example is ascorbic acid, easy to synthetise. Although it does consist of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, which technically makes it an organic compound, so it depends on your definition of organic. OLED screens aren’t called organic because they’re grown, but because there are organic compounds in their composition.
And that’s really the case for everything. Life at the end uses just chemical processes like burning and dilution, and we can do almost anything in a lab. We’re just usually not as effective. Glucose is the simplest sugar and easy to make, but just harvesting it from a plant is still much cheaper.
Anyway, you probably could ingest some tiny particles of iron oxide to get your iron, I guess.
Modern definition of Organic as it pertains to chemistry is any compound that contains BOTH hydrogen AND carbon.
Edit: Vitamins in general including absorbed acid are organic compounds because they contain both carbon and hydrogen atoms.
Edit2- I left out a key piece of information. The carbon and hydrogen need to be covalently bonded as well not just part of the compound.
So adding anything to water would there-for make it organic…? I don’t think that definition works…
Just adding something to water doesn’t make it a compound. Adding something to water makes it a solution.
Seeing that you claim this more than once, here is a simple link to correct this assumption: Wiki: Organic compound
Your link claims any compound with carbon is organic (there are exceptions listed) which really doesn’t fit either since there so many exceptions.
I was glib with my organic chemistry because it’s not just hydrogen atoms specifically but more the covalent bond between carbon and hydrogen that makes it organic so they have to be bonded covalently to be considered organic.
There’s still exceptions to this definition but they’re far fewer and usually only found in extremely unstable compounds like the fully halogenated fringe cases you mentioned in another comment.
The word “organic” has a number of different meanings.
organic adjective (OF FOOD PRODUCTION)
- not using artificial chemicals in the growing of plants and animals for food and other products:
- being or coming from living plants and animals
…(skipping a few others)
organic adjective (IN CHEMISTRY)
- (of a chemical substance) containing carbon
So the chemistry definition isn’t the relevant one when applied to food. The “Carbon based molecules” definition isn’t even the original one and it only applies in the context of science, not food.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Baking soda is also an inorganic compound.
