A new type of dietary fat that doesn’t require animals or large areas of land to produce could soon be on sale in the US as researchers and entrepreneurs race to develop the first “synthetic” foodstuffs.
US start-up Savor has created a “butter” product made from carbon, in a thermochemical system closer to fossil fuel processing than food production. “There is no biology involved in our specific process,” says from the firm.
Instead, its butter is derived from the carbon in coal, methane or carbon dioxide. The petrochemical industry uses such inputs to create syngas – a blend of carbon monoxide and hydrogen – which is then turned into long-chain hydrocarbons in what is called the Fischer-Tropsch process.
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Savor takes these hydrocarbons and oxygenates them to create fatty acids, before adding glycerol to form triglycerides, a form of fat.
To turn that into butter, Savor adds water and an emulsifier, before finally including beta carotene for colour and rosemary oil to add a “grassy” flavour. “It tastes like butter,” says Alexander, speaking to żěè¶ĚĘÓƵ at the Breakthrough Energy Summit in London late last month.
Synthetic fats could revolutionise the food system by providing calories while freeing up land for conservation and carbon storage, says Alexander. Products made this way could also provide a food source in the event of environmental disaster. “If we had an emergency, this could feed the whole planet for a really long time,” she says.
Savor’s first consumer offering will be butter, in part because of its high price point compared with other fats. “We very much expect to be able to compete on cost with butter,” says Alexander. The firm is currently working to secure regulatory approval for its product in the US.
But Alexander suggests Savor’s alternative fat could also replace other ingredients including palm oil and coconut oil, which are drivers of deforestation in tropical countries.
An analysis , co-authored by Alexander, suggested synthetic fats could have less than half the carbon footprint of those made using agricultural systems.
If the process of synthetic fat production is powered with renewable energy and made using captured carbon as a feedstock, it could be “dramatically better than anything we are doing in agriculture today”, says at Stanford University, the lead author of the study.
He thinks synthetic foods could offer climate benefits. “I don’t think we will get to the point where we are making all our food synthetically, but if we could make a dent in it by synthesising things like these otherwise quite-greenhouse-gas-intensive oil crops such as palm oil and soybeans, we could really reduce the amount of land that we need for our food supply,” he says.
at the non-profit Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED) says Savor’s process for producing synthetic fat could “produce large amounts of food while avoiding risks that threaten traditional agriculture, such as climate change, environmental degradation, pathogens and pests”.
Savor is backed by investment from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Microsoft founder Bill Gates’s investment vehicle for climate firms. , Gates said Savor is producing “real fat molecules like the ones we get from milk, cheese, beef, and vegetable oils”, but warned its main challenge is to drive down the price.
Getting the public to adopt synthetic fats into their diet may also be tricky, admits Alexander, particularly in the wake of scandals around artificial trans fats. “We want to engage with people about why we think it is good for the planet,” she says. “The land use, and all of that stuff, is really important. But actually you just have to make food that tastes really good.”
