A new startup is currently constructing fats from carbon extracted from the environment without agriculture or genetic modification. This is a novel food that seeks to replace butter and palm oil, without GMOs.
Carbon imitation butter
Savor is producing “animal-equivalent fats from carbon-based feedstocks like methane or carbon dioxide.” The actual input material has not been revealed, to my knowledge. Their goal is to produce fats at commodity price and scale, making a “vegan butter” and “milk fat” that match the sensory performance of animal fats.
Savor’s Seed Round was lead by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate-focused VC firm funded by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, and Richard Branson, among others, which funds companies that seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least a half a gigaton every year.
Kraft Foods, the snack food company, now Mondelēz International, selected Savor for their accelerator program at CoLab Tech 2024.
Snack food giants might be looking for alternatives to the existing oils used in their production. This heavily consolidated industry is capable of swapping ingredients in so much volume that it affects massive waves of consumers with near-zero warning, so the snack food industry is interesting to watch and this ingredient might become one of the reasons.
Can carbon butter earn you Aryan status?
From the Science History Institute, Brave New Butter:
As 1939 drew to a close and war spread across Europe, the Associated Press ran a peculiar story: the Nazis were on the verge of converting coal into butter. Word had come from an expatriate German scientist, Willy Lange, who had informed a group of American scientists
From the Organic Consumers Association: Nazi Coal Butter, The world’s first synthetic food
Coal “butter” inventor Arthur Imhausen was half-Jewish (by his mother), but he was shepherded into Nazi circles by Wilhelm Keppler, founder of a group of German businesses that funded Hitler’s rise to power, including I.G. Farben, known as the Keppler Circle. Keppler was chairman of the board of two I.G. Farben subsidiaries: Braunkohle-Benzin A.G. and Kontinental Oil A.G. When Imhausen opened his coal “butter” factory Deutsche Fettsäure-Werke in Witten in 1936, Keppler arranged for Hermann Göring to attend the ceremony.
To deal with Imhausen’s Jewishness, Keppler and Göring went straight to Adolph Hitler. In a letter dated the 18th In June 1937, Keppler reported to Göring that he had discussed Imhausen with “the Führer and he said that if the man really invented the thing, then we will make him an Aryan.” In July 1937, Göring told Arthur Imhausen that he was recognized by Adolf Hitler as a full-man; this liberation from the Nuremberg laws was extended to Imhausen’s entire family in November 1937.
This guy won his Aryan status by making coal edible in the Third Reich. Bravo.
Outlook
Lab grown food has not been successful in recent years. Most of these companies have followed the common trajectory of Silicon Valley startups, with a sharp rise elevated by fanfare, followed by a crippling correction to actual demand.
The snack food industry might have a new replacement for seed oils here, but I doubt carbon butter will be replacing fats like olive oil or coconut oil anytime soon. There just isn’t an appetite for novel cooking oils.
