Could a person survive on wholly artificial foods? Certainly there are edibles that come from non-living sources such as water and salt. Could oil, sugar, and vitamins be created entirely from chemicals?
There’s obviously no problems if the chemicals come from rocks, but could we get it completely from non-living sources? A barrel of crude oil may not seem living, but the petroleum had a biological source.
Could a nutritionally complete drink or paste come entirely from non-living sources? And how much would that cost to feed a person for a year?
What artificial foods come closest to imitating natural foods? I’m thinking margarine and Tang are pretty close. Could we make an artificial peach and how close would it be to biting into a real peach?
Another possibility is growing cloned cells in a beaker to create meat that didn’t come from a creature. I suppose that could qualify as ‘artificial’ if the chemicals used in the process come from non-living sources.
Synthesizing some of the complex molecules that are necessary for for good nutrition is next to impossible for any reasonable quantity. You would almost definitely need some of the biologically derived compounds for stereospecific portions. If you allow biologically derived molecules to be used in the process as long as they don’t go into the molecules themselves it would make it easier. Even so, while someone may be able to draw up a synthesis for everything you need from scratch, it wouldn’t be practical to carry out at all. You would need a massive industrial complex dedicated to making things just for you.
This is especially bad if you exclude oil or fossil fuels as a carbon source. You can technically produce similar molecules from inorganic sources, but it would take tons of energy.
So, are there any processed foods today that could easily come from non-living sources? I’m thinking margarine or an orange-flavored drink perhaps.
Heh. Just read “The Boy Who Would Live Forever” by Frederik Pohl. The aliens in the book create food factories that create “CHON food”–food synthesized from elemental Carbon Hydrogen Oxygen and Nitrogen (mined from comets, etc.).
So the answer is, yes–all you need is some space aliens with a magical maguffin.