Fats from thin air: Startup makes butter using CO2 and water
Category: News & Politics
Via: hal-a-lujah • one month ago • 6 commentsBy: Bronwyn Thompson (New Atlas)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Fats from thin air: Startup makes butter using CO2 and water Savor uses chemistry to make 'butter' that tastes just like the real thing Depositphotos View 1 Image 1/1 Savor uses chemistry to make 'butter' that tastes just like the real thing.
Bill Gates has thrown his weight - and his money - behind a Californian startup that believes it can make a rich, fatty spread akin to butter, using just carbon dioxide and hydrogen. And 'butter' is just the start, with milk, ice-cream, cheese, meat and tropical oils also in development.
The San Jose company, Savor, uses a thermochemical process to create its animal-like fat, which is free of the environmental footprint of both the dairy industry and plant-based alternatives.
"They started with the fact that all fats are made of varying chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms," Gates wrote in a blog post. "Then they set out to make those same carbon and hydrogen chains - without involving animals or plants. They ultimately developed a process that involves taking carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water, heating them up, and oxidizing them to trigger the separation of fatty acids and then the formulation of fat."
Many of us know the stats - according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), livestock are responsible for 14.5% of all global greenhouse gas emissions, and animal-fat alternatives that use palm oil contribute to widespread deforestation and biodiversity loss - but also know how delicious dairy products are. So will Gates' enthusiastic support be enough to get people excited about butter made from CO2?
"I couldn't believe that wasn't butter"
"The idea of switching to lab-made fats and oils may seem strange at first," Gates wrote. "But their potential to significantly reduce our carbon footprint is immense. By harnessing proven technologies and processes, we get one step closer to achieving our climate goals."
Savor's 'butter' is easily produced and scalable, but convincing people to swap out butter and other dairy products for 'experimental' foods will remain a challenge for the foreseeable future. Gates is hoping, however, that his support will do more than start a conversation.
"The big challenge is to drive down the price so that products like Savor's become affordable to the masses - either the same cost as animal fats or less," Gates wrote. "Savor has a good chance of success here, because the key steps of their fat-production process already work in other industries.
"The process doesn't release any greenhouse gases, and it uses no farmland and less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does," he added. "And most important, it tastes really good - like the real thing, because chemically it is.
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Food from thin air. Game changer.
I like it when what was once considered science fiction then becomes reality.
It does remind me of sci fi movies where someone walks up to an empty futuristic kitchen appliance, punches some buttons, opens the door and retrieves their food.
I ain't eating it. My butter has to come from a cow. That goes for my ice cream, too
He wants to put cows out of work!
Once on NT, in a long ago set aside religious discussion I made the point that science will decipher the means for a man to literally walk on air. "All things are possible" - the saying goes. It just takes understanding and cooperative people (many of our petty quarrels between us block the 'flow') to accomplish even the 'impossible.' This is a step in that direction.
This reminds me of a story that I once heard that probably isn't true but was meant to be a joke.
During World War 2 a Jewish scientist was about to be killed but he pleaded for his life by saying that he could make butter out of shit. That eventually got to Hitler's ear, so Hitler thought that it could be a good thing so he spared the scientist's life, and gave him a laboratory and whatever he needed to experiment. After a month or so Hitler visited the lab to see what progress was being made. The scientist told him that the process was developing, in that he was able to make the shit yellow. Another month went by and again Hitler visited, and the scientist told him that the yellow shit now had the consistency of butter. Hitler visited again a month later, but the scientist had to confess to Hitler that he could make shit look like butter, could make the shit feel like butter, but it still smelled like shit.