Energy: The invisible ingredient in everything

How your Thanksgiving dinner helps explain the world

The definition of energy is the ability to do work. Without energy, no work gets done. This inescapable reality of physics makes energy the invisible ingredient in everything, including your Thanksgiving dinner.

Think about the iconic pumpkin pie that will almost certainly be sitting on the table in a few days. You need sugar, cinnamon, salt, ginger, cloves, a few eggs, evaporated milk, perhaps some dulce de leche, a pie crust, and a can of pumpkin.

But most importantly, you will also need to bake the pie at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes.

It is the expenditure of this energy, in the form of heat, that causes a series of physical and chemical changes that transform the goopy ingredients in the oven into a pie that seemingly everyone, except for us, looks forward to eating on the fourth Thursday of the month each November.

Now, zoom out from the dinner table and think about how the ingredients in your pie got to the grocery store. They were almost certainly shipped there via a semi-truck powered by diesel fuel. Zoom out again, and you’ll see large machines powered by electricity running the canning equipment at the factory as the pumpkin filling is sealed for later use. We could continue zooming out indefinitely, but you get the point.

The inescapable reality of our modern lives is that everything we are accustomed to uses large quantities of energy. When we make energy more expensive, everything becomes more expensive. When energy becomes more scarce or less reliable, everything becomes more scarce, and supply chains become less dependable.

Unfortunately, many in the Western World appear to have forgotten that food does not come from the grocery store and electricity does not come from the outlet. For many, our abundance of food and energy is as good as magic - it simply appears when needed. As a result, they have elected governments that have treated food and energy producers as pariahs, causing grocery, electricity, and heating bills to be higher than necessary. These negative consequences will continue until policy improves.

Energy won’t show up on your grocery list this holiday season, but it is the invisible ingredient standing between turkey with stuffing and salmonella. Be sure to thank a farmer and those in the energy industry in the coming week; they are the true Founders of your Feast.

Safe travels, everyone.