This Startup Created Animal-Free Butter Made From Carbon Dioxide
A startup based in California called Savor has created an animal-free butter from carbon dioxide. It might be a hard sell for people who love their dairy products, but it’s supposed to taste just like real butter.
The reason that humans tend to prefer animal products over plant-based alternatives is due to their fat content. It’s what gives so many foods their rich, juicy flavor.
Savor’s version of butter contains fat as well. But, the startup’s team doesn’t need any livestock to obtain the fat.
Instead, they developed a thermochemical process that involves pulling carbon dioxide from the air and combining it with oxygen and hydrogen to create synthetic fat.
Then, water, an emulsifier, beta-carotene for color, and rosemary oil for flavor are added to turn the fat into butter.
The process does not use farmland or unleash any greenhouse gases, which wreak havoc on the climate.
It also uses significantly less water than traditional agricultural practices. Every year, approximately 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases are emitted from various sources—seven percent of that figure comes from the production of fats and oils from animals and plants.
The new “butter” offers a potential way to combat climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the environmental footprint of agricultural systems.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock industry is responsible for 11.1 to 19.6 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
sebra – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
By creating butter from carbon, the state of our environment can be improved without forcing people to give up the foods they’re wired to love.
The carbon footprint of the synthetic fat is less than 0.8 grams of CO2 equivalent per calorie. In comparison, real unsalted butter with 80 percent fat generates 2.4 grams of CO2.
So far, Savor has held informal taste panels with several people. In the future, the startup plans to hold a more formal panel “as part of our commercialization and scale-up efforts.”
Bill Gates, the billionaire and former CEO of Microsoft, is invested in the company. He is among the people who have tried the butter creation on bread and with a burger. In a blog post, he expressed his disbelief over how it wasn’t real butter.
The use of synthetic fats can result in the production of large amounts of food while avoiding risks that traditional agriculture faces, such as climate change, environmental degradation, pests, and pathogens.
Savor hopes to find synthetic fat alternatives for other popular foods, like coconut oil and palm oil. These products typically require deforestation to make them.
Before that can happen, the startup will need to tackle a few challenges. For one, they must figure out a way to lower the price of their products so that the general public can afford them.
Currently, they are working on getting regulatory approval in the United States.
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