A company in Batavia, Illinois is making butter in a way you've never seen before. No animals, no plants, no oils; this butter is made from carbon.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34272214

A California-based biotechnology startup has officially launched the world’s first commercially available butter made entirely from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen, eliminating the need for traditional agriculture or animal farming. Savor, backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, announced the commercial release of its animal- and plant-free butter after three years of development.

The revolutionary product uses a proprietary thermochemical process that transforms carbon dioxide captured from the air, hydrogen from water, and methane into fat molecules chemically identical to those found in dairy butter. According to the company, the process creates fatty acids by heating these gases under controlled temperature and pressure conditions, then combining them with glycerol to form triglycerides.

  • partial_accumen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    10 days ago

    To put it in simple terms, Savor says they take carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water, heat them up, oxidize them and get a final result that looks like candle wax but is in fact fat molecules like those in beef, cheese or vegetable oils.

    So their process sounds like it creates synthetic lard, not butter. This can still be a good thing as the extra ingredients to make it “butter” aren’t really the hard/impactful part of butter.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    1·
    10 days ago

    I’d actually be willing to give it a try if it’s vaguely price-competitive, but their website is all glam shots of butter and people doing things with butter and not only doesn’t sell it but doesn’t tell you where you can get it.

    https://www.savor.it/

    Also, they did not do a good job of choosing that name. It looks like there’s a very-similarly-named French Canadian manufacturer of butter, Savör, which apparently isn’t too religious about using their umlaut:

    At Savor, we believe the best butter starts with the best environment. That’s why we source our grass-fed dairy butter from New Zealand, a country renowned for its pristine landscapes, sustainable farming, and exceptional dairy quality.

    I foresee a collision between those two.