An American startup, funded by Bill Gates, has created a butter made using only carbon dioxide and hydrogen. The result is a paste rich in fat and flavor, vegan and very similar to the animal product.
A California-based startup claims to have developed a complex process that eliminates the need for animals in butter production, without jeopardizing the taste.
Savor, backed by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, has been experimenting with creating dairy-free alternatives to ice cream, cheese and milk, using a thermochemical process that allows it to build fat molecules by creating chains of carbon dioxide, hydrogen and oxygen. The latest innovation is a new animal-free alternative to butter.
The company uses a thermochemical process to create a paste rich in butter-like fat, using carbon dioxide, heat, hydrogen and oxygen. They extract CO2 from the air and hydrogen from water, then heat and oxidize these elements to form fat.
They then add glycerol to form triglycerides, a form of fat. The final process that really turns the paste into butter is the addition of water and emulsifier, before finally including beta-carotene for color and rosemary oil to add a “herbaceous” flavor.
In terms of impact, this “butter” could have a carbon footprint of less than 0.8 g of CO2 equivalent per calorie. The standard climate footprint of real unsalted butter with 80% fat is approximately 2.4 g of CO2 equivalent per calorie.
The company hopes to have the butter on sale by 2025 and is now in the testing and commercial approval phase.
Defending the initiative on his blog, Gates wrote: “The idea of switching to lab-produced fats and oils may seem strange at first glance.
But its potential to significantly reduce our carbon footprint is immense.
By harnessing proven technologies and processes, we are one step closer to achieving our climate goals.
“The process does not release any greenhouse gases and uses no farmland and less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture uses,” he concludes.
Marta Cerqueira is from Minho and a vegetarian. Luckily, she lives in Lisbon, where there is more tofu than sarrabulho. She has been a journalist for over 15 years, the last of which writing about food and sustainability. Now, out of the newsroom, she continues to write whenever she can, be it in magazines, journals, post its, or on her Instagram page, which she uses to share a life divided between being a mom-person-foodie-traveler. Still, she created Peggada so she could write about what doesn't fit in a magazine, journal, post it or Instagram: a better world.
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