How is carbon dioxide being turned into food in the lab?

Scientific progress, combined with the need to reduce resource consumption, is driving a wave of sustainable innovation. Laboratories are now the birthplace of technologies that would once have been unimaginable – from meat grown without animals to lab-made diamonds – offering alternatives to extractive, resource-intensive methods. Most recently, butter made from captured carbon drew global headlines and high-profile investors, signalling that foods based on carbon dioxide are moving from curiosity to commercial reality. Unsurprisingly, carbon-dioxide-to-food has emerged as a fast-growing field at the intersection of research, industry, investment and policy. At its core lies the fusion of chemistry and biotechnology – but what does this ‘lab-grown’ revolution offer?