A startup backed by Bill Gates has come up with a revolutionary way to create dairy-free butter out of nothing more than hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The company is called Savor, and the idea started from the fact that fats are all composed of chains of hydrogen and carbon atoms. So, Savor started looking for ways to turn that into butter, cheese, milk, and ice cream that was completely dairy-free.
The result is something that is very similar in taste and texture to the real thing while not having dairy within it, thus making it more available to people who might have a hard time ingesting dairy products. Another great thing about the product Savor makes is that it also puts out a much lower carbon footprint than using real animal fat.
Gates explained how the company creates the dairy-free butter in a blog post, even breaking down how they did it without having to rely on plants or animals in any way. The final process they come up with allows them to pull carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water. They then heat it up and oxidize it.
This causes the fatty acids to separate and then form into fat. Unfortunately, there is still a long way to go before this unique butter can be found in stores anywhere. That’s because the company is still in what they call a “pre-commercial” phase, where they are trying to work through the regulatory approval. However, they do expect to be able to hopefully move forward and start seeing sales in 2025, at the least.
The video above explains the dairy-free butter a bit more. Gates says it is similar to butter and tastes like the real thing because it is made using the same process. Taste is a very important part of the process, too, as people are already very wary about trying lab-made food alternatives, especially because of how many chemicals some of them might have.
