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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.

pezmaker ,
@pezmaker@sh.itjust.works avatar

Guarantee that A) it doesn’t taste just like real butter, and B) it’ll make you shit yourself and bring a return of the label “may cause anal leakage”.

Does that mean it’s not a potentially viable product? No, it doesn’t. But let’s not bullshit.

Fiivemacs ,

I get sick everytime I eat meat from Walmart. I fear bill gates butter will kill me.

disguy_ovahea OP ,

The problem with Olestra (the anal leakage oil alternative) is it’s a mixture of hexa-, hepta-, and octa-esters of sucrose with various long chain fatty acids. The resulting radial arrangement is too large and irregular to move through the intestinal wall and be absorbed into the bloodstream.

What Savor has supposedly created is chemically identical to the fatty acids in butter. It’s not made of new compounds, but made in a new way.

atro_city ,

What's up with people talking about shitting themselves?

Nasan ,

We’re in the presence of masters of the art of shitting one’s self

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

There was a run of fat replacement back (iirc) in the late nineties. Olestra was one of the name brands.

It wouldn’t digest at all, and it also wouldn’t mix in happily with the rest of the body waste in the colon. Hence, anal leakage becoming a phrase you would see on food labels.

And you would, sometimes, have not only leakage, but diarrhea. Sometimes violent diarrhea.

Basically, the oil was slippery enough to escape the anus no matter how tight it was. And there was a lot of it, under pressure from other waste behind it.

atro_city ,

Thank you for that insight. Kind of hilarious they didn't figure that out during product testing.

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.

Liz ,

Yo this would be great for some actual proper carbon sequestration. Make some butter from the air and pump it back down into the wells.

isolatedscotch ,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJslrTT-Yhc

Liz ,

So I have limitations with videos, but the argument that capturing carbon is costs more energy than it took to put into the air is valid as long as we’re still dumping carbon in the air. But, we have to stop putting carbon in the air and we have to start taking it out again.

isolatedscotch ,

completely agree with you, but until the whole world stops dumping it in the air (classic) carbon capture is worthless. I’m interested if this thing of making butter can be worth it, because you’re not just removing CO2, you are also making something that would have required farming a cow, which is much more resource intensive.

I guess we’ll need some studies done on the topic

echodot ,

It’s like a very limited Star Trek replicator. It can make anything you want as long as it’s butter.

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

cyborganism ,

So they invented another kind of margarine.

Xtallll ,
@Xtallll@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

No, they invited another kind of cow.

01189998819991197253 ,
@01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

Did the cow accept their invitation?

https://media.tenor.com/eD97JdPXgnUAAAAC/teambestb.gif

charade_you_are ,

finally someone did the thing everybody wanted

sunzu ,

And everybody asked for

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 )

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.

blackbrook ,

So this new carbon sequestering program is going to be kind of a good news / bad news thing. …

Xtallll ,
@Xtallll@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

There are ≈950 gigatons of excess CO2 in the atmosphere 27% of that by weight is carbon, the us population is 333milion, so if every American eats 770lbs of carbon sequestered butter we will solve climate change.

blackbrook ,

Of course the danger is that this is cancelled out by increased carbon emissions from a making a commensurate amount of toast.

ArmoredThirteen ,

Just got to start deep frying our steaks in this new butter and we’ll get there in no time

littlebluespark ,
@littlebluespark@lemmy.world avatar

Wait. So a “butter star” is possible?

LemmySoloHer ,
@LemmySoloHer@lemmy.world avatar

Once one is discovered, there will be a NASA mission to bake a gigantic loaf of bread and launch it at the butter star.

littlebluespark ,
@littlebluespark@lemmy.world avatar

And Musky’ll have a tantrum trying to race a croissant at it first.

rsuri ,

The problem with making carbon into butter is it will just be released once someone eats it and burns off the calories. BUT, I think you can make soap from just about any oil. So you could turn carbon from the air into fake butter, turn that fake butter into soap, and then store the soap in caves, solving any potential soap shortages for the next several millennia while also solving the climate crisis.

disguy_ovahea OP ,

Butter is already made from carbon. They’re creating the same hydrocarbon chains that are in the fatty acids that butter is comprised of, just without the cow.

Adalast ,

Also, for anyone who thinks that carbon bound up in fatty acid chains in butter is released back into the atmosphere through metabolism, I will direct your attention to the population US Midwest and Great Plains. These people have been proving that you can effectively sequester butter for many decades.

disguy_ovahea OP ,

To be honest, people probably cause more environmental damage from releasing methane after eating butter. Lol

Adalast ,

Luckily methane, while a potent greenhouse gas, breaks down in the atmosphere quickly. It does break down into CO2 and water, so the question quickly becomes: “are the farts of Midwesterners more potent than the amount of CO2 taken out of the atmosphere by making butter?”

My quick guess is luckily, no, they are not. Some amount of the butter will be stored in fatty tissues which will be sequestered 6 feet underground in a cement box eventually. Most will be shat in liquid or semi-solid form into a toilet to be processed by waste management. As long as they are responsible and compost it into nitrate rich fertilizer we should stay very comfortably ahead of the FBI (Fart to Butter Index).

disguy_ovahea OP ,

There’s nothing good about methane release. It’s 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. After ~12 years, it breaks down into CO2 and water, both of which continue to contribute to the problem, since water vapor has no easy way to return to Earth once in the upper atmosphere.

Human farts are not a concern, but cow farts are a huge contributor to climate change.

Adalast ,

I definitely understand that. My commentary is mostly satire based in fact. Hence the FBI at the end.

disguy_ovahea OP ,

I figured, but the first part concerned me. There are a lot of non-scientific comments on this post in a science community. I was being overly analytical. Sorry about that.

Adalast ,

No biggie. Even though it is satire, the analysis is sound. Given the amount of fatty acids that are stored in tissues in the body or expelled as “solid” waste, paired with the offset of dairy cows, so long as the waste is managed properly and not just left to aerobic decomposition, there should be able to be well in excess of 80x the volume if CO2 removed from the atmosphere as there is methane/CO2 released post-consumption. As long as whatever mega food conglomerate who starts making it uses atmospheric CO2 and doesn’t burn limestone to obtain concentrated quantities quickly.

disguy_ovahea OP ,

Absolutely. I’m hoping that by creating more products that capitalize on using carbon will encourage more VC investors in carbon capture projects.

veganpizza69 ,
@veganpizza69@lemmy.world avatar

Looks like saturated fat. Don’t eat it. Queue ketobro pseudoscience.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/8345dcea-aa1c-4cc7-83ce-cc2138d0cbff.webp

Multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios of total and cardiometabolic mortality for 1-tablespoon/day increment in cooking oil/fat consumption. Forest plots show the multivariable HRs of total (a) and cardiometabolic (b) mortality associated with 1-tablespoon/day increment in butter, margarine, corn oil, canola oil, and olive oil consumption. HRs were adjusted for age, sex, BMI, race, education, marital status, household income, smoking, alcohol, vigorous physical activity, usual activity at work, perceived health condition, history of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer at baseline, Healthy Eating Index-2015, total energy intake, and consumption of remaining oils where appropriate (butter, margarine, lard, corn oil, canola oil, olive oil, and other vegetable oils). Horizontal lines represent 95% CIs

Cooking oil/fat consumption and deaths from cardiometabolic diseases and other causes: prospective analysis of 521,120 individuals bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/…/1

MonkderDritte ,

There’s so much factors at play here, take the numbers with a grain of salt. Remember the thing with eggs and cholesterol?

yeahiknow3 , (edited )

The “thing” with cholesterol is that the science wasn’t actually wrong! Eating foods laced with cholesterol is indeed unhealthy, as the data showed, which is why everyone incorrectly assumed cholesterol was to blame, until it turned out that the real culprit was saturated fat, which is concentrated in animal products, which also lots of contain cholesterol.

But hey, all those pesky scientific details would require knowing biochemistry and that is just way too inconvenient for the troglodytes who treat food as a religion and are currently downvoting this comment.

veganpizza69 ,
@veganpizza69@lemmy.world avatar

I do remember, yes. Eggs are still bad, high cholesterol levels are still bad, eggs still raise cholesterol levels. TMAO is still bad. Eggs still raise TMAO.

Industry pseudoscience is exceedingly dangerous. What the egg industry studies (and their friends in cheese) do usually is to swap their object of desire with something else that raises cholesterol; or they use people who already have high cholesterol. Most people aren’t aware that there’s a cholesterol plateau which, if already achieved, hides dose effects.

take the numbers with a grain of salt.

oh, and salt is still bad.

Soggy ,

Salt is quite possibly the single most important nutrient we take in. Well, sodium is anyway. Is too much salt bad? Sure. That’s what “too much” means. Too much sun is also bad but a little is required for vitamin D production.

Being so reductive with your claims makes the rest of your argument less compelling.

veganpizza69 ,
@veganpizza69@lemmy.world avatar

Like I said, queue ketobro pseudoscience.

Soggy ,

Sodium-potassium pumps are pseudoscience, got it.

veganpizza69 ,
@veganpizza69@lemmy.world avatar

Humans didn’t exist before salt mining, got it.

Soggy ,

Fine, I’ll bite.

Salt mining is a human invention, though not at all a recent one. Seeking out natural salt deposits to directly consume is essential herbivore behavior because vegetation alone is an insufficient source of key minerals. Adding animal products, especially seafood, to a diet should be sufficient for minimum healthy intake of not just sodium but all trace minerals and vitamins but concentrated supplements are obviously also available and careful meal planning can get it done with just plant products. That is of course a truth for the modern, developed world and not at all indicative of our biological heritage.

The downsides of slight-to-moderate overindulgence of salt, mostly high blood pressure through water retention, can be offset by a more active lifestyle. (Sweat more, hydrate more, flush the excess out.)

And it’s cue. A queue is a waiting line.

veganpizza69 ,
@veganpizza69@lemmy.world avatar

I meant queue, not cue. It’s a pun. It means that ketobros usually have a list of bad arguments, like a playlist. I usually fill my bingo card in 1-2 comments.

though not at all a recent one

go on, how old is it?

The downsides of slight-to-moderate overindulgence of salt, mostly high blood pressure through water retention, can be offset by a more active lifestyle. (Sweat more, hydrate more, flush the excess out.)

The downsides are many more. The hypertension is just the tip of the iceberg. And “sweating it out while working” is a weak excuse, especially irrelevant today.

You’re trying to make it into some huge necessity at a dose you don’t even comprehend, you just assume that it has to be high. We already know that the very processed stuff is bad and it’s usually full of salt. That’s because salt is both a preservative and it makes food hyperpalatable, thus making it more marketable, more tasty, more desirable. That alone should tell you that salt isn’t naturally common. The brain turns up those excitement responses for stuff that is rare: salt, sugar, fat, all in high density. Our tongues are so sensitive to salt intake that we literally adjust our taste.

In terms of natural herbivores, I’ll have to remind you that salt licks don’t grow as formations in grasslands or forests.

Ketobros love to defend salt because salt is very important to them. It’s a preservative, and preserving meat is an old practice. Add salted cheese or butter for extra. And few carnivore/lion diet types eat unsalted raw meat, like… lions.

And then we have these people: www.scielo.br/j/abc/a/8yHr8tMsx5hB6s3sbQZRzKC/?la… (note: these people are being cleansed from the Amazon now by ranchers, feed growers and miners)

Stop trying to make it harder than it looks.

muhyb ,

I know an entire village who eat eggs scrambled in butter everyday and they still live ~80 years.

rodneylives ,

I love it when foodstuffs get put in scarequotes.

postmateDumbass ,

Lube based butter product sounds delicious.

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.

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.

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