329
I'm curious about the nutritious value and in particular the cholesterol levels of this product. I suppose since it is indistinguishable from butter, it should be the same. Margarine 2.0
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
329 points (91.6% liked)
Uplifting News
16222 readers
326 users here now
Welcome to /c/UpliftingNews (rules), a dedicated space where optimism and positivity converge to bring you the most heartening and inspiring stories from around the world. We strive to curate and share content that lights up your day, invigorates your spirit, and inspires you to spread positivity in your own way. This is a sanctuary for those seeking a break from the incessant negativity and rage (e.g. schadenfreude) often found in today's news cycle. From acts of everyday kindness to large-scale philanthropic efforts, from individual achievements to community triumphs, we bring you news—in text form or otherwise—that gives hope, fosters empathy, and strengthens the belief in humanity's capacity for good, from a quality outlet that does not publish bad copies of copies of copies.
Here in /c/UpliftingNews, we uphold the values of respect, empathy, and inclusivity, fostering a supportive and vibrant community. We encourage you to share your positive news, comment, engage in uplifting conversations, and find solace in the goodness that exists around us. We are more than a news-sharing platform; we are a community built on the power of positivity and the collective desire for a more hopeful world. Remember, your small acts of kindness can be someone else's big ray of hope. Be part of the positivity revolution; share, uplift, inspire!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Whilst yes, uplifting, I also have a certain inherent skepticism to artificial facsimiles. Too often it's an unwelcome discovery.
For instance about a year ago we found a new product in the cheese aisle, slightly cheaper than regular gouda and called "gaudina" - turns out, not actually cheese but instead made from milk powder, palm oil and other assorted stuff.
Until somebody proves through proper trials and reviews that the products have no statistically significant difference in health outcomes, I'll be hesitant.
“Other assorted stuff”? The palm oil probably isn’t great, of course it’s simple existence is causing the intentional destruction of important forests and it, and the people who use it, can fuck right off, but otherwise I dunno, that doesn’t sound like the end of the world.
I think health on cheese a pretty low bar to beat tho
...carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen...
Pretty sure that is what regular butter is made out of too.
Yes, they aren't trying to make an alternative butter substitute as I understand it. They're trying to make real butter via a purely chemically synthetic process.
“Tastes just like the real thing” is a sure sign that it is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the real thing
I'm watching you, Dent
That’s what I’m thinking. For example, there are milk proteins in butter that undergo the Maillard reaction to produce different flavors. Will this product have the same proteins?
Typically there are minor 'impurities' that make the 'real' thing taste different.
Vanillin, for example, is very easy to produce chemically, which is good, because growing and harvesting it naturally is very difficult, but it's missing a lot of the compounds which add subtle yet important taste and smell to the natural stuff.
load more comments
(1 replies)
How is this not just crisco, hydrogenated fat? Butter seems like it has more going on, traces of milk proteins & sugars that give it flavor.
Hydrogenated vegetable oils still start with vegetable oil, which have to be extracted from farmed crops (mostly soybeans).
This is a process that skips living feedstock from biological organisms and assembled the fatty acids directly from methane, water, and carbon dioxide. No photosynthesis, no cellular metabolism, nothing like that.
load more comments
(2 replies)
If it's not dairy, is this not margarine rather than butter?
Also, a
proprietary process
Ugh, capitalism
The basic process is not proprietary. It's just the Fischer-Tropsch process. It's been in use since WWII. It produces hydrocarbon chains of arbitrary length from whatever hydrocarbon feedstock you can provide.
Dietary fats are just certain short-chained hydrocarbons accompanied by certain flavorful compounds.
The "proprietary" part is what chemicals they add to the synthesized fat to make it sufficiently comparable to butter.
The Nazis used the same basic process to produce "butter" from coal feedstocks about 90 years ago. This is nothing new.
load more comments
(4 replies)
I bet that price is the main issue. The reason all of these startups fall into oblivion is that price is astronomical.
This isn't new technology. This is the Fischer-Tropsch process, which cracks and/or lengthens hydrocarbon chains to produce molecules of the specifically desired length. The Germans used this same process almost a century ago. They cracked coal to produce lighter chemicals (primarily methane) then re-lengthened those methane chains to produce a variety of products, ranging from fuels, lubricants, and yes: edible "butter".
This article repackages the same technology the Nazis used to feed their U-boat crews in WWII.
You frame it like it's a bad thing but even if the process is mostly the same isn't that good? Also we can clearly improve on a 100 year old technology even if it's "solved".
My primary issue is that the entire article is somewhat deceitful. They use phrases like "never seen before", "unprecedented", "pioneering", but those characteristics do not really apply to the +90-year-old technology. The only significant part of the "process" that is different from what was uses in WWII is the specific flavor packs they add to the product.
Their deceitful comments about the technology have me questioning the veracity of the rest of their claims.
Don't get me wrong: I think that Fischer-Tropsch is one of a few important technologies we need to be adopting. The reason we need to adopt it is because it is incredibly energy intensive, but not necessarily time critical. It can provide a profitable sink for excess solar energy production during long summer days, to produce hydrocarbon fuels for the transportation and aviation industries, yet switch offline overnight, overwinter, and during inclement weather, when solar can't meet demand.
But we just don't consume enough butter for this application to be useful to solar generation.
The Air Force experimented with Fischer-Tropsch "SynFuels" about 15 years ago. They actually certified most/all military aircraft to burn SynFuels, to lessen our military's reliance on foreign oil.
load more comments
(1 replies)
This isn’t butter, this is one type of butter fat. It’s missing the milk solids, proteins, and other molecules that contribute to butter’s smell and taste.
I shall add some potassium and market it as buttOCK
I can't believe it's not butter
load more comments
(3 replies)
Once we kill the Earth, this will be how food is manufactured. I am now going to finish my box of Soylent Green.
I'm not sure why people are so puritanical about this. I think Beyond Burgers and Soylent are great.
load more comments
(19 replies)
load more comments
(14 replies)
Just a hydrogen atom away from being plastic.
So, can we turn the garbage patch into butter?
Margarine?
I would like to see the LCA analysis on this one. I would not be surprised if this ends up using energy causing more damage than the damage that dairy farming methane and land conversion is doing.
I'd be very impressed if this somehow created more methane than cow farts.
load more comments
(7 replies)
view more: next ›