Comment on Apart from water and salt, are there any inorganic foods?
WhoRoger@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
Radio_717@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Modern definition of Organic as it pertains to chemistry is any compound that contains BOTH hydrogen AND carbon.
Eheran@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Seeing that you claim this more than once, here is a simple link to correct this assumption: Wiki: Organic compound
Radio_717@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
schmidtster@lemmy.world 1 year ago
So adding anything to water would there-for make it organic…? I don’t think that definition works…
match@pawb.social 1 year ago
sorry, are you interchanging solution and compound here?
schmidtster@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Pointing out the nuances of not being specific in a science discussion.
Radio_717@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Just adding something to water doesn’t make it a compound. Adding something to water makes it a solution.
schmidtster@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Depends on the definition you use… which is exactly why we are here.