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Comment on Butter made from carbon tastes like the real thing, gets backing from Bill Gates

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.

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halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

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.

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- SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
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- Hobo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  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 extremelt rarely, if ever, is derived from Castoreum cause 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.
  
  Source: smithsonianmag.com/…/does-vanilla-flavoring-actua…
  
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  - iopq@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Incorrect, vanillin is the primary component of real vanilla beans and responsible for like 90% of the flavor.
    
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    Hobo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I don’t understand what this would be correcting in what I said above. Can you show me what part this is correcting? Cause I’m legitimately confused.
    
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- tormeh@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  It would have cost you nothing to not write this.
  
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  - tal@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Maybe he wouldn’t have lost anything, but I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy his comment.
    
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- MBech@feddit.dk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Also, poop has natural flavour. Natural flavour also doesn’t mean it tastes good.
  
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  - SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Spoken like someone who’s never ate shit.
    
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    NoForwardslashS@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    You’re not going to catch me out with this one again!
    
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  - blargle@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Get your Synthetic poop flavour here!
    
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- qyron@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Myth. Vanilla extracts either come from low grade vanilla pods or cloves. It may have been but not today.
  
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- MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Mmmm, I like licking beaver butt. 😉
  
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- elucubra@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  My ex wife’s uncle was the director of the south American division of the arm that made coloring and flavorings of one of the big Food/Chem groups, Procter & Gamble, or unilever, or one of those. Can’t remember.
  
  No one in his household ate any processed/ultra processed foods.
  
  Do the math.
  
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- nurple@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Fuck man I had no idea, I’ve missed out on my prime years of eating beaver anal secretions 😭
  
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  - ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    They can still be your prime years in terms of quantity of beaver ass eaten, if not in quality. But I think you sell yourself short. They’re gonna love you!
    
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crank0271@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

They never say what the “natural flavor” is

…it’s people?

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- HugeNerd@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Where do you think Trump is sending all the homeless? A big old wooden screw press…
  
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- vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  There’s something unpleasantly psychopathic in emotion about BtVS, but this one moment was funny.
  
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  - crank0271@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I was thinking Soylent Green, but if Buffy provided a reference point for Charlton Heston, all the better.
    
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Dragomus@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- UnpledgedCatnapTipper@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
They add just a little butter for that real butter flavor

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