Startup Makes Butter Using CO2 and Water (newatlas.com) 206
A Californian startup funded by Bill Gates is making rich, fatty "butter" using just carbon dioxide and hydrogen, with other dairy-free alternatives in the works. New Atlas reports: 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."
"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 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." The research has been published in the journal Nature Sustainability.
"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 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." The research has been published in the journal Nature Sustainability.
Yes, but what does it cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
If it's cheaper than butter, then I might be interested; there's been a vegan alternative to butter promoted in the UK recently that did taste good, but it wasn't especially cheap. Though the definition of 'cheaper' does deserve hard questions; how far is the normal production of butter subsidised by the production of pollution that isn't being paid for.
Re:Yes, but what does it cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yes, but what does it cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with ultra-processed food is usually not the ultra-processed food, .but the lack of un- or low-processed food.
Furthermore, the issues with that "ultra-processed" food category are wide and varied in itself. Some items have high sugar or fat, some have lower fiber than the stuff it is supposed to replace, some have indeed additives that don't become a problem until they are in everything you eat and adding up to critical levels. Some stuff in that category isn't even that highly processed at all! Engineer together low processed Salt, Fat and Sugar and a few flavors and you have something that should NOT be your sole diet, but triggers all addiction centers in your brain: Cookies
And there is nothing wrong with cookies but they still should not be the only thing you eat.
That "ultra-processed-food" thing is a rule of thumb. And as long as 95% of food engineering effort goes into making food cheaper at lower qualities, it is an absolutely valid rule of thumb. Would be different if the goal of that whole processing would be high quality food. Food does not HAVE TO be bad just because it is produced in a big factory, but it usually is.
But to circle back to the artificial butter: This is by no way butter. This is the chemical main ingredient of butter. It is an ingredient that with water, lactose, carotene and flavors could be made into artificial butter. Or be used as an ingredient to replace butter
Re: (Score:3)
> But to circle back to the artificial butter: This is by no way butter.
I can't believe it's not butter!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I know little about this so we'll see what the ultimate answer is - but I'd say this kind of defines 'ultra processed' at least from my 10000 metre level.
I think that the whole definition - even the name - of "ultra Processed" is just clumsy. When I smoke a brisket or make pulled pork, I'm subjecting the product to hella processing. Using a process. A lot of process. Gets rubbed down with a mixture of spices and salt, left overnight to assimilate, then smoked for 12 hours and "mopped" wit a mixture of vinegar, beer, a bit of oil, and yet more spices.
Soy Burgers are highly processed. But any health effects are more based on the phytoestrogen load they giv
Re: Yes, but what does it cost? (Score:2)
Yes, I hear that bovine-sourced carbon and hydrogen atoms are far more healthy than atmospheric carbon and electrolyzed hydrogen atoms.
There's a statistically higher chance of the synthetic butter being healthier, because it won't be carrying all the other stuff that can be secreted into milk, such as antibiotics.
Re: (Score:2)
And that has nothing to do with the topic at hand because nobody ever claimed that vegetable shortening == butter. But thanks for the total non-sequitur.
Re: (Score:2)
If you ate just lard, you would lower your cholesterol counts.
But if you eat carbs and lard, womp womp.
The shortening is not the big problem.
Re: (Score:2)
"ultra-processed" is a catch-all term, that holds lots of things that don't fit the rule. Like yoghurt.
Lots of "ultra-processed" things ARE bad for you, but not all of them.
This would definitely fall into the ultra-processed category. It's not fair to say "therefore it's bad for you", but it could well be proper to say "therefore it's likely to be bad for you".
Re: Yes, but what does it cost? (Score:5, Informative)
If it's chemically identical in the same way that, say, ethyl methylphenylglycidate is strawberry then it's really not identical at all. Naturally produced products are the end result of the interaction of hundreds if not thousands of different compounds and processes. Your estimate of the safety of the animal-derived version might change depending on production system, but as far as milk goes in general - an incredible amount of effort goes into ensuring it's microbiologically safe.
Re: Yes, but what does it cost? (Score:4, Interesting)
Fats are generally much simpler than, say, a whole strawberry. And if you're looking for "microbiologically safe", a synthetic product stream is FAR less likely to be contaminated by bacteria than something sourced from dirty cow udders.
Producing food from air or organic waste was something I started thinking a lot about during the Assad sieges on Syrian rebel strongholds, when people were starving - not that it would have been practical for them to implement on the fly, but you know, could it be done at all? You can get to the same sorts of syngas either from CO2 + water + energy, or wood gas.
Glycerol is probably the simplest abiotic calorie source, maybe via the acrolein/propylene oxide route; both should be produceable from your syngas either in directly or in a few-step process.
But you don't just need calories. Producing mixed carboxylic acids (fatty acids) isn't too hard (selective oxidation of syngas hydrocarbons), but selecting just the ones that are healthy to consume (including essential fatty acids), and better, joining them into triglycerides with the above glycerin so that they're not disgusting, definitely dials up the complexity. You could probably chain the glycerin and carboxylic acid processes together using different fractions of the gas-to-liquids product for each.
You're not going to be assembling whole proteins from scratch. Individual amino acids are possible and perfectly edible, though challenging, and there's at least nine that you have to synthesize. And then there's a whole host of vitamins that one needs in ever-smaller quantities.
The motivation would, of course, be the potential for less input energy requirements and vastly less input space, in constrained environments (not just edge cases like cities under siege from a dictator, but places like space habitats). I don't think you'd realistically ever justify using non-biological processes for anything needed in the quantities of amino acids or less; I think in any situation it would just be better to leave that to microbes. But getting calories and essential fatty acids from synthesis, that seems plausible.
Re: (Score:3)
BTW, when discussing "alt-food" scenarios, there's one possibility I've found very interesting, which is alternate feedstocks to organisms to avoid photosynthesis - in particular, acetate (which slots directly into the citric acid cycle, used in regenerating acetyl-CoA). The logic is that photosynthesis gives terrible yields of consumable outputs relative to the energy input (and even worse if you have to use artificial lighting). If you can use an industrial feedstock, such as acetate, to feed organisms (e
Re: (Score:3)
One thing I have thought about though is... if you encouraged a plant with mycorrhizae to have the mycorrhizae (but not roots) grow into a separate growing medium, and saturated said medium with acetate, but not the root zone... could you lead to a sufficient net transfer of energy from the mycorrhizae to the plant? That's the opposite of how energy is supposed to transfer, but it's been demonstrated in some situations, is required of all orchid seedlings (they start life as fungal parasites as their tiny
Re: Yes, but what does it cost? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because a strawberry is more than a clump of ethyl methylphenylglycidate?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If ethyl methylphenylglycidate is present in strawberries, what is the difference between that in a strawberry and same molecule produced in a lab?
In a strawberry, it's surrounded by the rest of the strawberry. In a lab it's surrounded by a lab. In some cases, like many proteins, chemicals only work if they are surrounded by other chemicals, like di-hydrogen monoxide, for example.
Re: Yes, but what does it cost? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is chemically identical? Butter contains at most 85% fat, so maybe the fat is identical, but the rest?
Re: (Score:2)
It is chemically identical? Butter contains at most 85% fat, so maybe the fat is identical, but the rest?
Mainly water. However, afaik the butter taste comes from diacetyl and acetoin.
Re: (Score:2)
And acetylpropionyl. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Probably just as bad for your health as cow butter since it's full of saturated fats.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe less because no trans fats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Yes, but what does it cost? (Score:2)
It also skips the tons of feed having to be grown on acres of land, and the methane release of all the cow shit. That's not nothing.
Re: (Score:3)
Initially it could / will cost more - new inventions almost always do. You usually need to get them to scale. However, in this case, if its using the air, and a massively lower amount of water, then the process / machines will be the costs. Almost certain to be bespoke at this point in the inventions life cycle, so probably expensive. If it can be rolled out, costs can go down. How much it "costs" by the time its being sold in supermarkets or widespread is impossible to answer now.
Re: Yes, but what does it cost? (Score:2)
Exactly this. Think of what goes into making traditional butter: tons of feed, acres of pasture, veterinary care, farm labor, milk processing, and industrial processes to churn it into butter.
This, if it scales, skips everything right up to the industrial process, substituting big tanks of CO2 and water, and a big fat electrical wire as the inputs.
Re: (Score:2)
That may be true today, but up until the mid-19th century, butter was made by hand. It wasn't until both mechanical churns and adequate refrigeration became available that factory-made butter became practical.
Re: (Score:2)
I recently encountered some "vegetarian/vegan butter" that was first, rather expensive and second, it contained trans-polyunsaturated fats. So, thanks, but no thanks. If these startups wish to be of real service to humanity, then they should concentrate on making fuel.
Re: (Score:2)
It is question of economy.
1kg of butter costs much more than 1kg of fuel
So if the process is the same in terms of cost - then it is smarter to start with butter...
Especially that vegan butter costs even more than standard one and tastes worse
Re: Yes, but what does it cost? (Score:2)
âoeWe almost got it. Unfortunately this fuel is too viscous below 18c.â âoeIs it edible?!â âoeUhh yeah I guessâ âoeShip itâ
Re: (Score:2)
Purposely created transfats are completely forbidden in the US, not rounded dow to zero forbidden, completely forbidden. It can not be used as an ingedient, for a long long time now.
Re: (Score:2)
Whoops... (Score:4, Insightful)
Diamonds are just carbon. Carbon is cheap... ;)
Re: Yes, but what does it cost? (Score:3)
Idk.. there's a company that reversed engineered aging booze and chemically, you could go from molasses and water to bottle in a week. I'll try this stuff if it's available and go from there. We don't always have to do it the hard way.
No greenhouse gases? (Score:3)
So where does the hydrogen come from then, do they have some kind of H2 well they can extract it from? Aside from that, who wouldn't want to eat butter thats so processed its never been anywhere near anything organic. Its effectively coming from a chemical plant. Yum!
Re: No greenhouse gases? (Score:3)
Lots of people eat margarine, so apparently weâ(TM)re quite capable of substituting butter with highly processed fats.
This actually sounds like the upsides of both products.
Re: No greenhouse gases? (Score:5, Informative)
Margarine is generally hydrogenated vegetable oil (which has its own issues, not least traces of nickel catalyst being left behind), but its not manufactured from raw materials.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: No greenhouse gases? (Score:2)
It's easy to make H from H2O with electricity. Watch the pink slime video about chicken nuggets and tell me that reverse engineering chemically identical oils from water and greenhouse gasses doesn't deserve a chance.
Although tbh this is probably IP they bought from a company that couldn't make their hydrocarbon generator cheap enough for gasoline.
To put this in weed terms, they figured out how to make synthetic THC. No terpenes etc though, so it'll probably have a flatter flavor.
Re: (Score:2)
"...process that involves taking carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water"
I know the information is all the way down on the fourth line of the summary, and thus very hard to get to, but if you really try, it is there to be found.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, thanks for the heads up there genius! I know that, but my point was what generates the electricity? If its not green power or nuclear then there's a greenhouse gas cost in doing so.
Re: (Score:3)
Wow, thanks for the heads up there genius! I know that...
Not quite sure what justifies your snark there. Earlier you asked where they were getting the H2 and asked if they had an H2 well. So, either you did not actually know, and you're lying here, or you were lying in that post.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So where does the hydrogen come from then, do they have some kind of H2 well they can extract it from?
Well, in point of fact, they do. For example: using bacteria to extract hydrogen from old oil wells [wired.com]. Of course, obviously natural gas wells are hydrogen wells as well with a little cracking of the methane. Or they could get the hydrogen from water through various processes. As for the butter being heavily processed, as others have pointed out, this may constitute less "processing" than making butter the traditional way. In any case, the concern about processed or "ultra-processed" foods doesn't really have
Chemical composition (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Or they just love and trust real butter maybe.
Re:Chemical composition (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Chemical composition (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Chemical composition (Score:4, Interesting)
If it was economical they would market it as a diesel substitute instead. Pretty simple.
Re: (Score:2)
No doubt someone figured out that they could make something vaguely like popcorn oil and ran the numbers and found out it cost more than diesel.
Calling it butter is an insult to the intelligence of everyone at whom the message is targeted.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Chemical composition (Score:2)
If their goal is reduce the environmental footprint of cattle, a diesel substitute wouldn't make much sense.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Chemical composition (Score:2)
If you're eating enough butter for it to be a substantial source of vitamins that's probably not going to go well.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, there is a difference, although not in the triglyceride molecule itself. It's the manufacturing process itself. We're just not as good as nature.
Any chemical reaction in a lab is going to have residual reactants and solvents. If the chemistry is completely aqueous, then the "solvent" is water, so that isn't necessarily a problem, but there are still trace amounts of the original reactants. Then you have side and intermediate reactions. These are much easier to control in a laboratory than at industrial
Re: Chemical composition (Score:2)
Methane emissions is a serious issue with cattle.
Re: (Score:2)
Methane emissions is a serious issue with cattle.
As we struggle with the effects of what happens when one species overpopulates to an extreme, the issue isn't with cattle - it's too damn many people. https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info] A mere 8.1 billion people now.
And since most people enjoy their cow products, the number of cows increase to meet demand. And people want their civilization and all of the CO2 emissions that brings.
We are going to continue until nature takes care of the problem. It isn't the moocows. It is humans and our inability to c
Re: (Score:2)
I disagree. There's no reason 8 billion (or 10 billion) people couldn't live on Earth in a sustainable way. Whether we actually get there in time is another question, but the problem is not the number of people, the problem is the things those people are doing. Fewer people would of course be a relatively straightforward way to mitigate the problems, but unless you get down to, I don't know, under a billion, it will not be sufficient. And I would expect that level of population reduction would actually
Re: (Score:2)
Can you explain?
Re: (Score:2)
There is no difference between a triglyceride made by a cow and the exact same triglyceride molecule made in a lab, so everyone should be all for it. Unless they are afraid of science.
Science clearly does not yet have a complete picture of human biology, so eating foods we evolved with seems a good bet. Science brought us trans fats, remember.
Start with butter (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Start with butter (Score:2)
It's not a binary choice. *Some* food, the most carbon intensive foods, have the incentive to be made in a lab because if they can do it and it's not gross (it's all kinda been gross so far) then why not? IF it's what they say, it's probably better than oat milk lattes.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Veganism IS a religion, or at least a quasi-religious philosophy. Strict vegetarians can generally wear wool coats or silk ties.
Re:Start with butter (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think farm closure and housing construction are related.
The problem is people see farms and have been conditioned to think "natural, healthy, clean" when the reality is the opposite.
Many types of farms are terrible polluters, and then there's the animal antibiotics and the zoonotic diseases and the animal faeces in rivers and the pesticides and the patent-encumbered seeds and the water scarcity and on and on and on.
We can do all of this so much better, and we should. We will always need some farming, but I won't mourn the decline of the animal side of the dairy industry if we develop genuinely viable alternatives that are less ecologically damaging.
It's called Fischer-Tropsch, its been done before (Score:5, Insightful)
Some Germans figured this out in the 1930s. This is hardly some technological breakthrough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
While Germans were using coal as the source of carbon and this Bill Gates funded effort is using CO2 the chemical process is much the same. I suspect that this new variation on the theme of "coal butter" would be quite energy intensive because they are starting with carbon that's already been oxidized as opposed to carbon that is not oxidized in the form of coal. This energy has to come from somewhere. In the case of butter from dairy cows the energy comes from plants that the cattle have eaten, so it's solar powered. Bill Gates says this process "uses no farmland" but if it's using solar power then it is still using land, and depending on the specifics it could be using more or less land. It could also be using a lot of water because solar panels need to be washed and cooled. It could be using a lot of toxic chemicals because those solar panels are made from something. I'm not so sure this would be environmentally beneficial.
The US Navy has been working on producing aviation fuels from the nuclear power plants that exist on aircraft carriers and potentially other nuclear powered vessels. They've been working on this since at least 2010 but the progress hasn't moved much since there's not been much interest in funding this from Congress. They finally got approval for some limited field tests while Trump was in in the White House, apparently President Trump was supportive of nuclear powered vessels for the Navy and Coast Guard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
From where I sit this idea of carbon neutral butter is an effort to get some public interest in developing the Fischer-Tropsch process, likely with the intention to bring down the costs to where it is feasible as a means to produce carbon neutral fuels. People are not likely to spend a lot of money on some specialty fuel for their cars but they might consider paying a premium for what is effectively just margarine out of the novelty of it or something.
Re: (Score:2)
"Fischer-Tropsch process with a computer"
Aha!
Re: (Score:2)
Do you think the CEO (Score:2, Interesting)
Of Kraft feeds his kids Kraft dinner?
Re: (Score:2)
Marketing (Score:5, Funny)
I can hear it now... "I can't believe it's not CO2 and H2O."
[ Apologies to the original [wikipedia.org] slogan. :-) ]
Nope..... (Score:2)
Trans fats (Score:2)
I'd really love to know how they will ensure that their product is free from trans fats.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Marginalrine", amirite? (Score:4, Insightful)
another fraud by high tech (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, are you listening, PEANUTS???
So much fraud out there.
I'm literally shaking.
Star Trek strikes again... (Score:2)
And this day went down in history as the day that a rudimentary implementation of Star Trek's "food replicator" was first revealed to the world.
Gene Roddenberry would be proud.
Live long enough to become a hero? (Score:2)
Either you die a villain, or you live long enough to become a hero. That seems to be the Bill Gates plan.
The Nature Test (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
CO2 + H2O = (Score:2)
Make it make sense. (Score:2)
using just carbon dioxide and hydrogen, with other dairy-free alternatives
Was that particular CO2 and Hydrogen specifically sourced from bovines, or does any CO2 and Hydrogen feedstock work?
What the fuck kind of writing is that?
Convincing people? (Score:2)
but convincing people to swap out butter and other dairy products for 'experimental' foods will remain a challenge
I don't know, it worked just fine for margarine.
Never underestimate the power of marketing.
Re: (Score:2)
People trusted science in the 20th Century.
Legally they can't call it "butter" (Score:3)
According to US Code 321a: https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... [cornell.edu]
21 U.S. Code 321a - “Butter” defined
For the purposes of the Food and Drug Act of June 30, 1906 (Thirty-fourth Statutes at Large, page 768) “butter” shall be understood to mean the food product usually known as butter, and which is made exclusively from milk or cream, or both, with or without common salt, and with or without additional coloring matter, and containing not less than 80 per centum by weight of milk fat, all tolerances having been allowed for.
No Thank You. (Score:2)
Can you envision... (Score:2)
...2 people mixing liquid:
Person A is mixing heavy cream and natural air
Person B is mixing water and their exhaling breath
You have to consume one of the mixtures after 5 minutes of them mixing. Which will you consume? Give me a fkng break
Pohl FTW! (Score:2)
More meaninglessness (Score:2)
Would you like some "butter" on your bugs? (Score:2)
Yum.
Can it make milk? (Score:2)
Tarkalian tea? A Ferengi Starduster?
The matter/energy replicator of Star Trek fame may always be a fiction, but this isn't pie-in-the-sky - more like pie from the sky. How small can the manufacturing equipment be made, what are the energy requirements, and can the technology be adapted to other (more complex) food products?
I still can't believe it's not butter (Score:2)
I'm just a consumer, not in a position to properly evaluate this, but I'm old enough to remember when butter substitutes made with hydrogenated vegetable oil was the new big thing, and that did not end well. So I think I'll just stick with real dairy butter and olive oil for now and let everyone else be the test case for this new stuff.
I'm sure it will be fine.
Gates needs to just stop (Score:2)
Bill Gates needs to stop fucking around with the food supply.
I have an idea for a name (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There is only one thing to do: Eat the rich. Redistribute their money. Reinvest in regular American citizens than pissing money into billionaire hoarders.
You should know you only get to do that once then there's going to be nobody willing to invest in profitable efforts again.
Bill Gates didn't steal this money, he convinced people to give this money to him because they wanted the products and/or services Bill Gates offered more than their money. Kind of like I can't eat a $20 bill but I can use that to buy a big fat hamburger and a beer, with maybe enough left over for a side of fries or onion rings. Someone that makes a bunch of tasty burgers could "hoard
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't butter. Please stop repeating Bill Gates' lies that it is exactly like butter. It is not.
Butter has a lot more than just a single fat molecule in it.
https://www.cdr.wisc.edu/butte... [wisc.edu].
I also didn't see anything about Bill Gates saying he loves it so much he's going to use it himself. It was all about convincing the masses to do it while he continues to eat normal foods and fly his private jet around.
"Butter" has a legal definition from the FDA, and this mess isn't it. They will have to call it something else, like "impossible spread"
Re: (Score:2)
"Butter" has a legal definition from the FDA, and this mess isn't it.
Same with "Ice Cream" vs. "Frozen Dairy Dessert". Pro Tip: Look for the former on the package.