Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/17/butter-made-from-carbon-dioxide-instead-of-animal-fat.html
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Florida and Alabama will ban these products in 3…2…1…
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On one hand it sounds like we’re inching ever closer to Trek’s replicators. On the other hand, this doesn’t feel quite right to me at all.
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Isn’t this just margerine? which is less healthy than butter?
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No. Margarine is made from vegetable oil. Hydrogen is bubbled through the oil, which solidifies it.
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Does this require less energy than making butter the common way?
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According to the article, yes. For one, you don’t have to grow a cow.
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but at the end of the day, how is this fat different than margarine? Is it a healthier fat than say olive oil?
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This old biochemist shall remain gently skeptical on this one. Butter, like all dairy products, are immensely complicated mixtures of molecules (fats, proteins, …). Butterfat is a common (~80%), but far from only, ingredient. And butterfat itself is multiple molecules. Starting from CO2 (plus “some hydrogen and additional oxygen”) is going to be a real task to make something that is remotely as nutritious or tasty as your stick of butter.
Fatty acid content of butterfat (from wikipedia page)
Type of fatty acid pct
Lower saturated (at most C12) 11%
Myristic saturated C14 12%
Palmitic saturated C16 31%
Stearic saturated C18 11%
Palmitoleic monounsaturated C16:1 4%
Oleic monounsaturated C18:1 24%
Linoleic polyunsaturated C18:2 3%
Alpha-Linolenic polyunsaturated C18:3 1%
Trans (mainly vaccenic C18:1 trans-11) 3%
black: Saturated; grey: Monounsaturated; green: Polyunsaturated; blue: Trans
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Since people apparently don’t want to follow the link and read the article, this “butter” is entirely synthetic. They aren’t starting with a naturally occurring oil and processing it into a butter-like substance.
The secret ingredient is the same one that makes humans crave cheeseburgers and bacon: fat. But Savor’s team doesn’t need livestock to create this component. Instead, it uses a thermochemical process that pulls carbon dioxide from the air and combines it with hydrogen and oxygen to create fat synthetically.
This fat is then turned into butter by adding water, an emulsifier, beta-carotene for color and rosemary oil for flavor. In the end, “it tastes like butter,” Kathleen Alexander, Savor’s chief technology officer, says to New Scientist’s Madeleine Cuff.
The process of manufacturing it is entirely different. That’s how it’s different. As far as healthy, I don’t think anyone has made the claim that it’s healthier than olive oil. The production process might, however, be more sustainable.
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any reference for that?
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I think it depends on the margarine. The original ones were still mostly saturated fats, so they weren’t great for you.
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This is one of those things that medical science has gone back and forth on over the years. Some newer plant-based spreads (we’ll just call those margarine, while milk/cream based stuff is butter) are possibly better for your heart, while neither is really healthy per se particularly when it comes to something like obesity.
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I was thinking of the trans-fat laden Imperial margarine that my parents used eat (and my dad preferred) instead of butter that they thought was healthier (and cheaper) back in the 70s.
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Right. “Parkay” was the other big one back then. And Chiffon “it’s not nice to fool mother nature.”
Jeez. I used to bring bottles of Parkay “sqeeze butter” liquid margarine when I went camping. I finally switched over to just bringing olive oil instead.
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Great news, more options that bypass cows the better.
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My dad was a chemical engineer and as a little kid I got to see a lot of his extensive factory. I thought that food was made there too. Maybe I was prescient.
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It’s well known that highly processed foods are bad for you. I wonder if this falls into that category?
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Mother Nature’s enforcer seems to be a Republican~
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Well, the inputs are 100% process, 0% food. It really doesn’t fit the question.
But to be slightly more serious, this product will be substantially less chemically complex than the natural dairy product; containing only one simple type of fat and a few other ingredients to make it more palatable. And that might be good or bad. If humans benefit from the dozens of types of fatty acids found in natural cream vs the simplistic fat it sounds like they’re creating with this process, then it’s less healthy. But if some of the natural fats from cream are bad for humans and this substitute doesn’t contain any of those, then this product is more healthy (by way of being less toxic).
Next you have to look at the process. This will be created from carbon dioxide which could be extracted from the atmosphere (healthy), or pumped from a CO2 truck from an oil refinery (unhealthy.) It stops the tons of food and grazing required to raise a dairy cow (healthy). But it requires energy to do this work (unhealthy as long as some of the energy comes from fossil fuels.)
Finally, it would be less than 1% of your caloric intake, so it wont make nearly as much of a difference as your choosing a vegetarian diet vs an omnivore’s diet.
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