Carbon Butter: Bill Gates Backed Start-up Whips Up Storm On Internet; 'God Knows What...'

A Bill Gates-backed company in the US state of Illinois is producing butter made entirely from carbon. The startup, Savor, creates butter without using animals, plants, or oils, offering a sustainable alternative that mimics the taste, smell, and texture of the traditional dairy spread.

The company said the process eliminated the need for farmland, fertilisers, and the greenhouse gas emissions typically associated with dairy butter production.

"So you're using this gas right now to cook your food and we're proposing that we would like to first make your food with— with that gas," Kathleen Alexander, co-founder and CEO of Savor, told CBS News.

Bill Gates, in a blog post last year, called lab-made fats and oils "strange at first" but said their potential to cut the world’s carbon footprint is "immense."

Savor believes its product could help reshape the future of sustainable food.

The news of a company making butter from carbon has stirred an uproar online.

A user on social media platform X wrote, "Disgusting. They are combining hydrogen, carbon and oxygen to create fat molecules then manipulate that to taste like butter. Why do this when we already have butter?"

Another wrote, "Bill Gates Fake Lab Produced Carbon Neutral Butter can't be good. Why does he want to take everything that's naturally beautiful & simply destroy it. Why can’t Bill Gates just leave stuff alone?"

Someone said, "Disgusting. God only knows what consuming entirely artificial products like this does to your body in the long term."

A user said, "Would rather eat real butter from happy cows than lab-made carbon. Some innovations just feel unnecessary. Also, why call it butter? Why do they want to usurp the popularity of the butter to push some garbage in its name?"

Others defended the concept.

"Quite literally all food is made from carbon," a comment read.

Someone joked, "My butter is also carbon butter. The CO2 comes out of the air and goes into grass in a process called photosynthesis. Then the cow eats it and turns it into dairy fat which I turn into butter."

Savor's butter is made by replicating the carbon and hydrogen chains that form fats. The company captures carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water, then heats and oxidises them. The final product looks like candle wax but is composed of fat molecules identical to those found in beef, cheese, or vegetable oils.

Despite its industrial scale, the process has a significantly smaller environmental footprint. Taste tests suggest Savor’s butter is close to traditional butter. The company also said that their butter contains no palm oil, which is a major cause of deforestation and climate change.