Why can’t we use food to generate the energy needed to power our cars/electronic devices?

Question

Our bodies use food for energy so why can’t cars or electronics?

In: Technology

Answer 1

We could, with some caveats, but it’d be a bad idea. Most food isn’t very energy dense, so for the same volume of fuel (which is the limiting factor for something like a car’s gas tank) you’d get a lot less energy from food than from a more dense fuel like gasoline. We sort of use food in biofuels like bio ethanol and biodiesel, but it’s not really food that you’d eat.