US start-up Savor says its synthetic vegan fat, made without livestock or the crops needed for margarine, could cut carbon emissions and save rainforests
    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      That’s still farming. This is literally a synthetic chemical reactor that takes in CO2 and probably hydrogen, and spits out food.

      It would push as another trophic level down, like happened with the agricultural revolution thousands of years ago.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    2·
    4 months ago

    I’ve been surprised by how little I’ve heard about this kind of research in the past. There’s Air Company vodka, and a startup useing hydrogen bacteria to make a sort of egg white, but I had to dig a lot to hear about either of those.

    Basic biology will tell you that very little energy passes all the way through a trophic level, so food production should be much, much cheaper at scale if we can do it like autotrophs. Farming will inevitably be replaced, at least in part, one day.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          4·
          4 months ago

          Interesting. The obvious limitation here is that while they’ve made fatty acids, they still need purchased glycerol to attach them to. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a cheap byproduct right now but for the future that needs to be worked on. I’ll eagerly await it on store shelves.

          Also a fun fact: If they’re using fossil carbon, which they probably are, eating this stuff will fuck up any carbon dating preformed on you.