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?

  • pjhenry1216@kbin.social
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    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.