# Can you make food with inorganic compounds? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 26, 2014, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589 "2014-08-26T21:35:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![buddy431](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@buddy431](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddy431)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/21 "2014-08-27T04:32:47Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The definition I’ve always seen is that an organic compound must contain at least one C-C bond, and must contain something other than carbon as well. So methane, carbon dioxide, diamond, and fullerenes are all inorganic, but ethene, ethane, and ethanol are all organic. I don’t understand the need for a C-C bond. Almost any chemist would agree that methanol and dimethyl ether are organic. Asking for a C-H bond is probably the closest you’ll get to an agreement, though you still get edge cases like urea and carbon tetrachloride. Is there any reasonable rule that will consider urea organic but cyanic acid inorganic? And yet that’s the difference that Woehler’s contribution hinges on. I think my definition is probably the best: anything that contains carbon, with certain exceptions [what exactly all of the exceptions are will be argued] ---
**Author:** ![Carl\_Pham](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9a140/32.png) [@Carl\_Pham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carl_Pham)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/22 "2014-08-27T07:46:56Z")
> [@Qwertol](#): > > Is there any food (with positive energy value. so don’t say water) that is made from inorganic compounds (that is, not coming straight from biological matter, organic compounds produced from inorganic compounds being allowed)? Of course. Here’s a paper on direct synthesis of ethanol from CO2 and H2: > **[Ethanol synthesis by catalytic hydrogenation of CO2 over RhFeSiO2 catalysts](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544296000953)** > > Ethanol synthesis by catalytic hydrogenation of CO2 was carried out over RhFeSiO2 catalysts prepared by coimpregnation. The added amount of Fe influe… Ethanol gives about 7 calories per gram, more than sugars but less than fats. ---
**Author:** ![Qwertol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Qwertol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qwertol)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/23 "2014-08-27T08:33:45Z")
It just seems weird to me that we still aren’t capable of creating industrial process that would be both more efficient and cheaper than growing plants… ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/24 "2014-08-27T10:28:26Z")
> [@Qwertol](#): > > It just seems weird to me that we still aren’t capable of creating industrial process that would be both more efficient and cheaper than growing plants… We do have one industrial process that indirectly produces food from thin air - the Haber process for ammonia synthesis, which is used to make nitrogen fertiliser. It is estimated that over half the nitrogen atoms in a typical human come from the Haber process. Your DNA and proteins, all built from the air 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kk\_fusion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kk_fusion/32/15276_2.png) [@kk\_fusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kk_fusion)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/25 "2014-08-27T10:44:27Z")
> [@buddy431](#): > > I don’t understand the need for a C-C bond. Almost any chemist would agree that methanol and dimethyl ether are organic. Carbon “chains” of length 1 only make an organic substance if they are “in line” with longer chains. H-CH[sub]2[/sub]-OH is valid because H-CH[sub]2[/sub]-CH[sub]2[/sub]-OH is. Often even a chain of length 0 counts, as in H-OH. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/26 "2014-08-27T10:56:58Z")
> [@Qwertol](#): > > It just seems weird to me that we still aren’t capable of creating industrial process that would be both more efficient and cheaper than growing plants… Why? Plants have been slaving away at this problem for a billion or so years of evolution, and they work on the nano scale. Life is pretty damned awesome at chemistry. It’ll be hard to beat. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/27 "2014-08-27T11:01:37Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > Why? Plants have been slaving away at this problem for a billion or so years of evolution, and they work on the nano scale. Life is pretty damned awesome at chemistry. It’ll be hard to beat. Besides, stealing someone else’s lunch is always easier than making your own. ---
**Author:** ![Qwertol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Qwertol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qwertol)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/28 "2014-08-27T11:06:57Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > Why? Plants have been slaving away at this problem for a billion or so years of evolution, and they work on the nano scale. Life is pretty damned awesome at chemistry. It’ll be hard to beat. Evolution has been “working” on ways of motion for billion years too, yet it hasn’t invented a wheel… ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/29 "2014-08-27T11:54:49Z")
> [@Qwertol](#): > > Evolution has been “working” on ways of motion for billion years too, yet it hasn’t invented a wheel… Probably not a terribly useful analogy - wheels are a mechanical feature of machines (and only especially useful in a single context: roads). It’s possible for machines to exist without wheels. It’s not possible for life to exist without food. Synthesising and metabolising food is something that living things _have to do_ - therefore, they have been obliged to be working on the process since the start. It’s possible, of course, that some founder effect or other constraint means that living things still haven’t stumbled on (or are restrained by design from) the most optimal methods of making food, but they have been doing this a long time, competitively, so it’s likely they’re doing it quite well. ---
**Author:** ![Qwertol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Qwertol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qwertol)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/30 "2014-08-27T13:38:01Z")
I’m just saying evolution does not necessarily has to come with the best solutions. For example, you could certainly point out mistakes in human body that wouldn’t be made by intelligent designer (I’m not giving any here, but you can find plenty articles on the internet …although it’s a controversial subject)… ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/31 "2014-08-27T14:11:11Z")
There are very good reasons why you won’t find a wheel in a living system that we don’t need to get into here. I would also argue that evolution will tend to be better at optimizing chemical reactions than it is at optimizing physical design features, but that’s little more than a personal opinion, so I won’t argue it. And it may well be that there are better solutions to be had, but we haven’t come close to finding them yet. We can’t even replicate photosynthesis in a tube yet with anything close to the efficiency of the most primitive plant. ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/32 "2014-08-27T14:27:14Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > There are very good reasons why you won’t find a wheel in a living system that we don’t need to get into here. > . There’s a wheel at the basis of all living systems - the rotary motor of ATP synthase. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/33 "2014-08-27T14:42:09Z")
> [@Qwertol](#): > > I’m just saying evolution does not necessarily has to come with the best solutions. For example, you could certainly point out mistakes in human body that wouldn’t be made by intelligent designer (I’m not giving any here, but you can find plenty articles on the internet …although it’s a controversial subject)… You’re not wrong about this in principle - evolution does paint itself into corners, it’s just that this one particular thing is very fundamental to the existence of living things - so it has been ‘in development’ since the get-go (and yet we know it’s still amenable to change - organisms can digest plastics, etc) - If evolution has anything close to optimal, it’s likely to be this. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/34 "2014-08-27T15:50:30Z")
Keep in mind, it’s not just the food that’s evolved-- It’s us, too. We can, in fact, engineer better energy-storing compounds than those that have evolved. If we were going to make life from scratch, we’d probably design it to run on octane, which has a higher energy density than fats and sugars. But _we_ can’t run on octane, so we still need to produce those inefficient fats and sugars. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/35 "2014-08-27T16:56:05Z")
> [@Busy\_Scissors](#): > > There’s a wheel at the basis of all living systems - the rotary motor of ATP synthase. I knew someone was going to point that out. It’s impossible to make any point about biology without someone bringing up irrelevant exceptions to the rule. It’s biology - there are ALWAYS exceptions to EVERY rule. I didn’t think it was worth the time to discourse about the difference between a subcellular molecular motor and a multicellular, large-scale structure. I still don’t. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589/36 "2014-08-27T20:26:51Z")
So what the OP is asking if you can make food from non-biotic/abiotic compounds? Clearly they’d have to be organic compounds in the chemistry sense. I’d think that with enough time and effort, someone could probably engineer a chemical process to create carbohydrates from petroleum, but I don’t know if anyone actually has done this. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-make-food-with-inorganic-compounds/696589.md?page=1)