Fabio tried to tell us decades ago that we could have something that tasted like butter but wasn’t butter…but I don’t know.
I don’t think a whole lot of people bought it (even if they did buy it).
Now, Bill Gates says this butter made from CO2 looks just like the real thing.
A startup called Savor, which is run under Bill Gates-funded Orca Sciences, says they’ve developed a way to make fats out of carbon dioxide.
It involves taking carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water, and absolutely no animals are involved in any way.
They claim this will cut greenhouse emissions produced by agricultural – which is about 8.5%, globally.
Gates is backing this up.
“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.”
Not only that, he says he couldn’t tell the difference between their butter and the real thing.
“Most important, it tastes really good – like the real thing, because chemically, it is. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t eating real butter.”
It makes sense, because all they’re doing is redoing the chemical building blocks until the are molecularly indistinguishable from the real thing.
The company also boasts that their products help with the global issues surrounding palm oil, the world’s most widely consumed plant-based fat.
It’s harvesting takes a huge toll on the natural world.
The scientists and researchers published a paper in Nature Sustainability explaining that they believe many dietary fats could be made in a lab.
They focused on how their processes would significantly cut emissions compared to animal and plant derivatives.
Lead author Steven Davis issued a statement.
“Large-scale synthesis of edible molecules through chemical and biological means without agricultural feedstocks is a very real possibility. Such ‘food without the farm’ could avoid enormous quantities of climate-warming emissions while also safeguarding biodiverse lands that might otherwise be cleared for farms.”
Every replacement process has its challenges, though, and this one is the costs – they will have a struggle in reducing the potential price enough that consumers could afford it.
That said, they think it’s a problem they can solve.
“The beauty of the fats is that you can synthesize them with processes that don’t involve biology. It’s all chemistry, and because of that, you can operate at higher pressures and temperatures that allow excellent efficiency. You could therefore build big reactors to do this at large scales.”
Only time will tell if you’ll be able to buy Savor butter in your local grocery store.
Also if it actually tastes like butter.
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read a story that reveals Earth’s priciest precious metal isn’t gold or platinum and costs over $10,000 an ounce!