Organic nutrients contain what atoms?

• A. Hydrogen only
• B. Oxygen and Nitrogen only
• C. Carbon and Oxygen only
• D. Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen

Answer: (D)

Organic nutrients are carbon-based molecules that form the building blocks of life. The atoms you most commonly find in these molecules are carbon and hydrogen, with oxygen also very frequent in many functional groups. Nitrogen is essential in many important organic molecules like amino acids and nucleotides. Because organic nutrients typically contain all four elements—carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen—the most accurate description is that they include all of them. The other options miss at least one of these common atoms, so they don’t fully describe the makeup of typical organic nutrients. For example, glucose has carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, while amino acids add nitrogen.