this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Nobody,

My darling,

Could call me

A fussy man -

BUT

I do like a little bit of butter to my bread!"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Isn’t that what it’s always been made of?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Germany managed to make butter out of coal during WWII.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago

Hydrocarbon chains? Yes. The success is that this process doesn’t involve cattle.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Until we reach mass deployment of electrolyzers, all of this hydrogen will be coming from natural gas. Would be interesting to do a life cycle analysis and see what percentage of the CO2 emissions associated with producing the hydrogen end up incorporated into the product.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Finally, after years of research and experiments, the Savor team settled on a method that combines carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water to make butter (synthetic fat) in the lab.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

The largest (farm) landowner in the US is backing a venture that does not require land?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

Smart investors diversify. Food production is a necessary industry.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 56 points 3 months ago (5 children)

It's a synthetic saturated fat, so basically a synthetic margarine. Butter is made from milk. So the headline should read "[...] makes 'margarine' out of water and CO2", but everybody hates margarine, so I get why they chose butter instead.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

“I’ve tasted Savor’s products, and I couldn’t believe I wasn’t eating real butter. It tastes really good—like the real thing, because chemically it is.” Bill Gates recently wrote in his blog post.

If it’s chemically the same as butter, should we call it butter or something else?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

~I can't believe it's not~ BUTTER

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

Give me Kerry Gold or give me death

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Really? I don't mind it as a substitute for baking, but for eating on bread or using it to fry something I don't think it comes even close to the flavor you get from real butter.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Oh, butter is better, sure, but my preferences are not mutually exclusive.

For example, I like salads without dressing, though salads with dressing taste better. Does that mean that we must ditch all salads without dressing? I hope not.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It's chemically identical to butter, so we wouldn't need milk cows.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago (2 children)

During WW2, due to the food shortage, Germans did this using the carbon from coal... The process is old and known.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine#Coal_butter

Let's see if the process can be made more efficient this time. Allegedly, the product was virtually indistinguishable from butter.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Allegedly, the product was virtually indistinguishable from butter.

Well it says

Margarine made from them was found to be nutritious and of agreeable taste

Doesn't sound indistinguishable to me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

It is just regular margarine, and for me, it is inedible. Tastes like vaseline.

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