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Bill Gates-backed startup makes ‘butter’ out of water and carbon dioxide

A California-based startup called Savor has figured out a unique way to make a butter alternative that doesn’t involve livestock, plants, or even displacing land. Their butter is produced from synthetic fat made using carbon dioxide and hydrogen, and the best part is —- it tastes just like regular butter.

olafurp ,

Don’t want to be a hater but doesn’t this basically create fat without nutrients? It feels like this is reinventing margarine albeit in a cool way.

disguy_ovahea OP ,

They’re the same fatty acids found in butter. Margarine is hydrogenated oil.

olafurp ,

They’re from the same class yes, but is it also going to contain vitamins A, D, E and K2 or contain fatty acids like Conjugated Linoleic Acid or Butyric acid?

I’m trying to point out that factory produced fats will most likely lose out on the health benefits of butter as a source of fatty acids.

sunzu ,

They will "enrich it" like the do with bread and other highly processed product with non bio digestable supplements for propaganda purposes.

olafurp ,

The article mentions that they added vit A so it gets the yellow color and I’m pretty sure they’re not going to add CLA or other vitamins to be competitive with butter.

Meanwhile there’s a cheap food supplement that you can give cows that reduces methane burping by 90%.

Swedneck ,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

well fat is inherently a nutrient so, no.

nandeEbisu ,

I wonder if they can use CO2 that comes from industrial carbon capture, or if it needs to be something purer that takes a lot of energy to produce.

Also, I’m not sure if we can get industrial volumes of hydrogen from sources other than fossil fuels now. Its been a while, but last I checked it was coming from things like byproducts from reformers.

FauxPseudo ,
@FauxPseudo@lemmy.world avatar

It would need to be food grade CO2. So breweries would be a good source.

charade_you_are ,

finally someone did the thing everybody wanted

sunzu ,

And everybody asked for

Duamerthrax ,

How does the cost per co2 captured compare to planting more trees? Or is this just another VC scam?

BehindTheBarrier , (edited )

If CO2 is a byproduct of another process, then I’d make a guess it is fairly cheap. The flaw here is that CO2 and H2 are both products of steam reforming using methane… Which is to say, the cheaper version might just come from using natural gas. Hydrogen has to be sourced from some energy consuming process, and that too is often from the methane steam reformation. So it’s certainly possible, but yet again is ready to become yet another “green” product made from fossil fuel. Doesn’t have to be, but I can be.

Edit: to correct a discrepancy, the article mentioned hydrogen, but if the hydrgon comes from water used in the process then some of the issues of providing H2 is less big. But either way I expect this to be energy costly. Nevertheless, a lab made product is still something that doesn’t need large areas of land to produce.

vxx ,

If you plant more trees, there wouldn’t be enough space for the cows to get milk and make butter.

I guess the calculation always works, even when people apply methods they use to discredit EVs

Etterra ,

If it tastes and spreads like a tub of Land o Lakes then I’ll probably try it. I don’t care where the hell it comes from as long as it tastes correct.

Asetru ,

During WW2, due to the food shortage, Germans did this using the carbon from coal… The process is old and known.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine#Coal_butter

Let’s see if the process can be made more efficient this time. Allegedly, the product was virtually indistinguishable from butter.

derpgon ,

It is just regular margarine, and for me, it is inedible. Tastes like vaseline.

RecluseRamble ,

Allegedly, the product was virtually indistinguishable from butter.

Well it says

Margarine made from them was found to be nutritious and of agreeable taste

Doesn’t sound indistinguishable to me.

Olhonestjim , (edited )

I mean cool, but if farts release CO2 after digestion breaks down fats and proteins, then it’s not much of a carbon sink, is it? Not to mention the scale necessary to reverse climate change. We’d have to make billions of barrels of the stuff, then pump it deep underground for long term sequestration. It’ll be so energy intensive we’ll require nuclear fusion.

Dead serious, I say we do it.

sushibowl ,

It’s not intended to be a carbon sink. It’s essentially intended to be a more carbon efficient way of producing margarine without having to grow e.g. palm oil and destroy forests. They thought, instead of making plants do the work of turning water and CO2 into fats, let’s just do it in the lab.

The basic science could work, although it’s usually tough to beat “put seeds into ground and wait” on pure cost. However the fact that they compare this to butter makes me sceptical. Given how wasteful growing a whole cow is just to make some milk fat, it’s easy to look efficient compared to that. They would compare themselves to sustainably produced margarine if they were honest.

vxx ,

It’s chemically identical to butter, so we wouldn’t need milk cows.

explore_broaden ,

Most of the CO2 savings comes from not raising cows, you’re correct that the carbon capture in the butter wouldn’t matter that much due to digestion, but it is likely not all the carbon will be released as CO2 again.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

It’s a synthetic saturated fat, so basically a synthetic margarine. Butter is made from milk. So the headline should read “[…] makes ‘margarine’ out of water and CO2”, but everybody hates margarine, so I get why they chose butter instead.

laughterlaughter ,

Hey, I like margarine…

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Really? I don’t mind it as a substitute for baking, but for eating on bread or using it to fry something I don’t think it comes even close to the flavor you get from real butter.

laughterlaughter ,

Oh, butter is better, sure, but my preferences are not mutually exclusive.

For example, I like salads without dressing, though salads with dressing taste better. Does that mean that we must ditch all salads without dressing? I hope not.

FordBeeblebrox ,

Give me Kerry Gold or give me death

derpgon ,

I can’t believe it’s not BUTTER

capital ,

“I’ve tasted Savor’s products, and I couldn’t believe I wasn’t eating real butter. It tastes really good—like the real thing, because chemically it is.” Bill Gates recently wrote in his blog post.

If it’s chemically the same as butter, should we call it butter or something else?

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

“I can’t believe it’s not chemically manufactured butter!”

skeezix ,

Processed butter food

Mr_Dr_Oink ,

Margerine is made from unsaturated fats, though. So it’s not the same. Is it?

catbum ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f119ef97-7ad6-470a-90b1-02f14a2af25b.jpeg

FourThirteen ,

What on earth is that picture?

msgomez06 ,

Canadian brand (President’s Choice) that apparently has a “memories of” product line.

Linkerbaan ,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

The largest (farm) landowner in the US is backing a venture that does not require land?

disguy_ovahea OP ,

Smart investors diversify. Food production is a necessary industry.

rbesfe ,

Until we reach mass deployment of electrolyzers, all of this hydrogen will be coming from natural gas. Would be interesting to do a life cycle analysis and see what percentage of the CO2 emissions associated with producing the hydrogen end up incorporated into the product.

vxx ,

Finally, after years of research and experiments, the Savor team settled on a method that combines carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water to make butter (synthetic fat) in the lab.

isolatedscotch ,

where do they get the electricity for it? I’m not saying it’s not feasible, but they better have a solar farm nearby

chemicalprophet ,

Isn’t that what it’s always been made of?

disguy_ovahea OP ,

Hydrocarbon chains? Yes. The success is that this process doesn’t involve cattle.

Rivalarrival ,

Germany managed to make butter out of coal during WWII.

TheReturnOfPEB ,

why do rich people want to replace any living being with a silicon version ?

Gates took billions to reinvent the cow. My guess is that Bill wants to own all that land and crops that cows eat because he is a fucking moronic hoarder.

disguy_ovahea OP ,

Cattle farming methane is a massive contributor to the greenhouse effect. This process would reduce methane output as well as consume carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas. It would help us in our fight against climate change.

Buddahriffic ,

Well, if it’s all being sold for consumption, it would be net zero carbon change for the product itself plus whatever carbon it takes to drive production.

The main advantage is the reducing the reliance on beef.

Though I gotta wonder how much demand can go down before the price reduction makes producing the volume of beef no longer worth it and only profitable if it’s scaled down because until then, they’ll just lower prices to keep producing the same amount or more because you’re a failure if line doesn’t go up.

masquenox ,

why do rich people want to replace any living being with a silicon version ?

Because then they can patent it.

So it’s no surprise that Bill “Anti-Food-Security” Gates, the world’s most famous patent racketeering parasite, has his vile little fingers in this.

DragonTypeWyvern ,

Liberals fucking furiously downvoting in defense of the oligarch that personally ensured Covid vaccines would be monopolized.

Yewb ,

They were not there when he literally stifled innovation and ruined thousands of companies and lives…

Seems his pr people have done great work over the last 20 years.

Socsa ,

Children furiously wanting to believe the world is black and white.

DragonTypeWyvern ,

Yes, you are.

kaffiene ,

Cows are one of the worst things for the environment. Massive production of methane at the cost of more water and land than any other protein source. Getting rid of methane works be the quickest way to dent global warming given how much worse than carbon it is (in the near term )

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Nobody,

My darling,

Could call me

A fussy man -

BUT

I do like a little bit of butter to my bread!"

rodneylives ,

I love it when foodstuffs get put in scarequotes.

postmateDumbass ,

Lube based butter product sounds delicious.

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