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I'm a traditionalist, I prefer my butter silicon based. Maybe germanium or tin if it's a special occasion
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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I must be losing my mind because I thought I saw this post 2 days ago except it said beer.
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.
So when I poop the carbon butter out, how long does it take to decompose? Because unless we make one of those nuclear waste containment salt bunkers for all. the butter carbon poop this kinda seems like a dumb idea.
About as long as meat, since that is also made from carbon.
I can see why some people might conflate Carbon Monomers and Carbon Polymer Chains with plastics, because thats what plastics are after all, but it's also the basic building block for almost all organic chemistry including proteins, fats (lipids), sugars, alcohols, and sugar alcohols (totally different thing from sugar and alcohol btw). Carbon can even form compounds with Ammonia, such as Carbamides like Urea which can be extracted from Uric Acid using Sodium and then used as agriculture grade fertilizers.
It's why we're called Carbon Based Lifeforms.
If you think that's crazy you should see all the wacky shit that Hydrogen gets up to.
Atoms are atoms. All they are doing here is artificially creating fat molecules rather than getting them from the environment so the decomposing time is not affected.
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.
Yeah #govegan, I love it. I am curious to try it. Great invention.
Should be a nice change from that silicon based butter I usually get.
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
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?
Higher protein content than the cow milk variant!
Doesn't work well in a cake, sadly.
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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.
I wonder where they source the methane from. Because I pictured a comicbook flip book of a balloon blowing up behind a cow
Methane is just the primary compound in natural gas.
I mean they can get it from the ground, but it can also come from things kind of fermenting in cows/our stomachs.
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.
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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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...
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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 weight loss med patents and how long until they purchase the artificial fats patent?
Honestly, I think we do need more fat. Everyone seems to be obsessed with less fat and more protein, but fat is an essential nutrient. If you want to lose weight, I recommend increasing your (healthy) fat consumption because you'll get more satiety per calorie vs carbs, and fatty foods are more likely to have protein than carbs.
If artificial fat can replace dairy or destructivly farmed veggie oil, I'm all for it.
You don't have to preach nutrition to me, I cook everything from scratch.
The problem here is that obese societies are already over-reliant on fat, so making it more available and cheaper is going to be self-destructive.
No, they're overly reliant on sugar. If you look at what obese people eat, it's tons of carbs and fat-free nonsense so they feel like they're doing something good.
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