Who wants vaccines and Vanicream, when you’ve uncooked milk and beef tallow? That’s what the web thinks, anyway. TikTok (or TallowTok) is presently slathered with devotees hailing beef tallow (sure, the rendered fats from a cow) as a miracle moisturizer. As of March 2025, there have been greater than 68.5 million posts on tallow. Manufacturers money in, whereas influencers flaunt before-and-after transformations, render tallow from suet, or smear beef lard on their pores and skin, pondering it’s tallow (it’s not).
The backlash towards industrialized magnificence mirrors anxieties about ultra-processed meals. The identical folks avoiding seed oils of their diets are actually in search of beef-fat balms for his or her faces—it’s not a coincidence that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is promoting “Making Frying Oil Tallow Once more” merch. However in a rush to eradicate toxins and stick it to large firms, you will have missed different dangers. I purchased some on the web and smeared it on myself to determine it out.
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A Transient Historical past of Tallow
Cow fats as face cream will not be as far out as you would possibly suppose. For hundreds of years, terrestrial animal fat—beef tallow, lard, and lanolin—had been staples in skincare. The Babylonians used ash and rendered fats to craft cleaning soap. Over time, tallow discovered its approach into early-candle-making and medicinal cures. Nineteenth-century ointments relied on them to deal with every little thing from burns and chapped pores and skin to wounds and ingrown nails. Conventional cleaning soap was a mixture of tallow and coconut oil, and early lipsticks blended animal fats and beeswax. Some tattoo artists will nonetheless advocate beef tallow soaps to raised protect ink.
By the Nineties, advances in beauty chemistry favored plant-based and artificial options that supplied larger stability and consistency. Security considerations surrounding bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow illness) additionally prompted firms to distance themselves from animal-derived components. Although byproducts like collagen, hyaluronic acid, and keratin developed with fashionable skincare, tallow was (largely) left behind.
However now, beef tallow is again.
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This revival is a part of a cultural obsession with ancestral residing. It’s the identical impulse driving the recognition of the carnivore weight loss plan, bone broth, and unpasteurized milk. Grand View Analysis reviews that the U.S. tallow market introduced in $627.9 million in 2023 and is projected to surpass $1 billion by 2030. At its core is the rejection of modernity, the idea that industrialization has corrupted nature and that the previous held purer options. The sweetness trade, with its preservatives, emulsifiers, and laboratory formulations, has turn into the enemy. Tallow, against this, is framed as a return to the untainted.
Beef tallow is wealthy in triglycerides and likewise accommodates important nutritional vitamins A, D, Ok, E, and B12. Some research recommend that tallow can enhance fatty acid focus within the pores and skin, making it a moisturizing agent. Nevertheless, comparative research have discovered that options like pumpkin seed oil and linoleic acid supply superior hydration. Whereas some would possibly tout its “pure” advantages, that phrase is extra advertising and marketing than reality.
