It’s called Savor and it’s Bill Gates’ startup, a few months ago they started producing synthetic butter in the laboratory starting from carbon dioxide and water. The flavor would be similar to that of animal origin and it was the founder of Microsoft who assured it.
What if we told you that Bill Gates, in his career as an entrepreneur, not only dealt with software, technology, computers and operating systems, but also with butter? It seems like a rather bizarre thing but in fact it happened exactly like this. It happened thanks to Savor, a Californian startup that deals with innovation in the food sector, particularly in the field of alternative fats. The founder of Microsoft, some time ago, invested in Breakthrough Energy Ventures (a company that develops technologies to combat climate change) which in turn invested in Savor: at that point Gates also became a shareholder. The company began producing butter in the laboratory starting from elements such as carbon dioxide (CO2), fossil fuels and hydrogen so as to create fats that resembled the original product.
How Air Butter is Made
Savor’s main mission is to reduce environmental impact by eliminating the need for traditional agriculture and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The startup has invested in research and development to create a technology that can produce customized fats and oils and that’s how air butter was born. We know that butter is obtained from the fat part of milk but, on an environmental level, to produce just one kilo of it, 5 to 14 kg of CO2 are emitted while, as stated by Savor, for one kilo of air butter 0.8g of gaseous emissions are produced. The results of the experiments of the Californian company were then published, in the form of a study, in the journal Nature Sustainability.
Thanks to this project, emissions will be reduced by 99%, which is a big step forward for science and the fight against climate change. Previously, even if we mentioned it, we said that this butter is made of “air”, but in what sense? Savor researchers have realized that to form chains of fatty acids, carbon is used that is extracted from carbon dioxide or fossil fuels. At that point it is made to react hot with hydrogen and oxygen taken from the air. Finally, water, salt, beta carotene are added (to reproduce the typical yellowish color of butter) and, as a French chef would say, et voilà we have created butter without using animal fats.
How Does It Taste?
The Californian company is conducting several tests on synthetic butter and one of the first tasters was none other than the great founder of Microsoft Bill Gates. The entrepreneur assured that the flavor of the butter created by his startup is exactly identical to the one we use every day in the kitchen. Obviously, with a visionary like Gates behind it, Savor butter has attracted the attention of many companies, restaurants, bakeries and even great starred chefs who would like to test it to see if there is the possibility of including it in their menus.
On the topic of “synthetic” food, one could address a substantially very complex discussion. The common opinion, referring to our country , is still quite negative when we hear about foods created in a laboratory: studies, tests and generic opinions demonstrate this. People would like various guarantees between costs, nutritional values and benefits to the body and, in this, cultured meat certainly also falls.
We know that most of the problems due to climate change are due to man and the work he does by building intensive farms that satisfy the very high demand for meat in the world. Companies like Savor were born precisely to deal with this emergency and fight against climate disasters. When you associate the word “synthetic” with some food, you immediately think of something of poor quality or non-nutritious, but the truth is not this. A food created in a laboratory is not even better than the natural one but, simply, another path is taken to arrive at the same structure with a final result that is in all respects the same. The thing that changes, and it is the most important factor, is that to produce a food (butter in this case) there will be a high level of sustainability work in production: a great advantage for the fight against climate change.
