Butter made from Carbon? Lab-grown butter backed by Bill Gates to hit shelves by 2027; chocolates coming this holiday season

Time of India

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Innovative butter made without agriculture
Chocolates are arriving this holiday season
Environmentally friendly and simple ingredients
Backing from Bill Gates
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A pioneering food technology company in Batavia is set to change how we think about butter and chocolates. Savor, a startup backed by Bill Gates, has developed butter made entirely from carbon and hydrogen, without using animals, plants, or oils.The company announced that chocolates made with this innovative butter will hit the market this holiday season, with wider retail availability expected by 2027.Unlike traditional butter, which relies on farmland, cows, and associated emissions, Savor's carbon-based butter is produced by converting carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water into fat molecules.Kathleen Alexander, co-founder and CEO of Savor, told CBS that the process 'releases zero greenhouse gases' and has a land footprint thousands of times smaller than conventional agriculture.Despite its industrial production method, they reported that the butter looks, smells, and tastes remarkably like real dairy butter. Food scientist Jordan Beiden-Charles told CBS, 'This is pretty novel, to be able to make food that looks and tastes and feels exactly like dairy butter, but with no agriculture whatsoever.'Savor is currently collaborating with restaurants, bakeries, and food suppliers to introduce chocolates made with their lab-grown butter in time for the 2025 holiday season.Alexander shared, 'Savor Butter, in either its current manifestation or with our partners, we expect that to be on the shelves kind of more like around 2027.'Savor butter contains only fat, water, lecithin as an emulsifier, and natural flavor and color, no long, unpronounceable ingredients. Crucially, the product contains no palm oil, a major driver of deforestation and climate change.Fats and oils from animals and plants account for about 7 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions annually, so Savor's method presents a groundbreaking, climate-friendly alternative to traditional fat production.Bill Gates, the visionary billionaire and prominent investor in clean technology, praised the breakthrough in his blog, noting, 'The idea of switching to lab-made fats and oils may seem strange at first. But their potential to significantly reduce our carbon footprint is immense.'