New 'Butter' Made From Carbon Dioxide Tastes Like the Real Dairy Product, Startup Says [View all]

The company, called Savor, uses a synthetic fat to approximate the taste of butter and is seeking regulatory approval

Margherita Bassi
Correspondent

July 17, 2024

Humans have been craving fatty foods for some four million years—a desire that could explain why most consumers continue to prefer animal products to vegan alternatives, putting high expectations on the flavor of plant-based foods. Now, though, a California-based startup called Savor has created an animal-free butter from carbon dioxide that it claims tastes just like the dairy version.

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 startup has held informal taste panels with tens of people, and they “expect to perform a more formal panel as part of our commercialization and scale-up efforts,” Alexander adds to the Guardian’s Mariam Amini. Billionaire and former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, who is invested in the company, also tried their creation on bread and with a burger—“I couldn’t believe I wasn’t eating real butter,” he wrote in a blog post earlier this year. “The burger came close, too.”

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-butter-made-from-carbon-dioxide-tastes-like-the-real-dairy-product-startup-says-180984717/