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This is really about how we feed our species and heal our planet at the same time
Yeah we need more fat. That's what's gonna help. More fat. Who owns the Olestra patents and how long until they purchase the artificial fats patent?
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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Technology
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Thank goodness we have the assurances of a billionaire oligarch to help steer humanity in the right dietary direction.
Global warming and ecological crises make shifting diets away from animal products a pretty good idea.
Whether it's antibiotics resistance, deforestation, or greenhouse gas emissions, humanity is paying a very high price for animal agriculture at the current scale.
Yeah #govegan, I love it. I am curious to try it. Great invention.
Good ol' Gates, always around to make a quick buck of the bloodied backs of humanity. Never an advancement meant to aid us all he can't swoop in to parasitize. That's right Billy boy, I didn't forget the COVID vaccine patents. Billionaires must be condemned to the rubbish bin of history.
From the description I cannot in a million years assume that it tastes anywhere near butter. And where's the buttery taste going
"Fat molecules chemically identical to those in butter". I'll wait until I hear more third party people try it or I do myself.
Of course not. They've made artificial fat, not butter. BIG difference
water, lecithin as an emulsifier, flavor and color
Should be a nice change from that silicon based butter I usually get.
I'm not giving up a small pleasure like butter just so that a billionaire can buy another private jet and wipe out whatever tiny carbon footprint savings comes from giving up butter
I too love participating in the simple pleasure of systemic animal abuse just to spite the billionaires
The cows yearn to be milked.
Is femboy milk butter ok?
You want them to have a slightly smaller mansion on Nantucket island?
How much carbon is emitted to run the factory to make it though? Are we talking a net negative here?
Some, as prepping the carbon and hydrogen will take energy. But it wouldn't be hard to be way better than the emissions associated with dairy farming for butter. Cost could still be higher, though depending on how much material is needed for the process.
You mean how much butter is emitted
I've heard that people made from carbon taste like the real thing too, you all should try it!
So, like every other butter and oil, that's why we call them hydrocarbon.
I imagine this "butter" doesn't contain any glycomacropeptide, α-lactalbumin, β-lactoglobulin, serum albumin and immunoglobulins
You're probably right, but I can't wait to see the egg on your face if it does turn out to contain glycomacropeptides, α-lactalbumin, β-lactoglobulin, serum albumin and immunoglobulins!
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While I think this is pretty amazing science stuff, the writing is terrible. Here is the progression of the story as written:
They made butter from carbon...
Well, it's actually made from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen...
OK, it's actually made from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, oxygen, and methane...
Well, no, it's actually made from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, oxygen, methane, and glycerol...
Wait, hang on, it's actually made from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, oxygen, methane, glycerol, natural flavor, and lecithin...
Now, the source of glycerol is in question, because they say this butter is both animal and plant-free. Glycerol can be made synthetically, but it's WAY more expensive to do it. Also, I'm not seeing any way to create lecithin without plants. They never say what the "natural flavor" is.
It kind of sounds like the beginnings of star trek's replicators...
But that aside, somehow I doubt those are the exact only "ingredients" they use.
And it wouldn't surprise me at all if the end product contains all kinds of trace elements of various not so healthy chemicals used to get the parts to combine into the actual butter.
Like the process to get the glycerol or lecithin in a state they can use.
Ofcourse a lot of our dietary ingredients are contaminated in various levels anyway.
It makes me think of Enterprise, where they don't have replicators but they do have protein resequencers, which can take waste matter and convert it into useful things, but they can't do energy to matter conversion yet.
They never say what the "natural flavor" is
...it's people?
Where do you think Trump is sending all the homeless? A big old wooden screw press...
There's something unpleasantly psychopathic in emotion about BtVS, but this one moment was funny.
I was thinking Soylent Green, but if Buffy provided a reference point for Charlton Heston, all the better.
They never say what the "natural flavor" is.
A reminder that "natural flavor" doesn't mean healthier or even something you might want over the artificially created flavors. It just means it comes from a natural source and is not lab created.
Castoreum, sometimes used for vanilla and raspberry flavoring, comes from beaver anal secretions. That would be labelled under a "natural flavor" and you'd never be told more than that.
I'll take the artificial stuff any day just on principle there.
I think it's worth pointing out that vanilla extract is from vanilla beans and artificial vanilla is whatever the fuck they feel like that tastes like vanilla. Also, modern artificial vanilla extremely rarely, if ever, is derived from Castoreum because it's hard as hell to farm beavers and expensive as all fuck. The "artificial vanilla comes from beaver anal glands" is basically a prevalent internet myth that gets passed around like the, "You eat 7 spiders a year in your sleep." myth.
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My ex wife's uncle was the director of the south American division of the arm that made coloring and flavorings of one of the big Food/Chem groups, Procter & Gamble, or unilever, or one of those. Can't remember.
No one in his household ate any processed/ultra processed foods.
Do the math.
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All butter is made from CO2 it simply goes through a processing step known as cow.
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