The Beef Tallow Skin Care Trend Smells Like a Scam Leave a comment

Who wants vaccines and Vanicream, when you may have uncooked milk and beef tallow? That’s what the web thinks, anyway. TikTok (or TallowTok) is at the moment 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, considering it’s tallow (it’s not).

The backlash in opposition to industrialized magnificence mirrors anxieties about ultra-processed meals. The identical folks avoiding seed oils of their diets at the moment are looking for beef-fat balms for his or her faces—it’s not a coincidence that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is promoting “Making Frying Oil Tallow Again” merch. However in a rush to remove toxins and stick it to huge companies, you’ll have missed different dangers. I purchased some on the web and smeared it on myself to determine it out.

A Temporary Historical past of Tallow

Cow fats as face cream shouldn’t be as far out as you may assume. 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 means into early-candle-making and medicinal cures. Nineteenth-century ointments relied on them to deal with the whole lot 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 fat and beeswax. Some tattoo artists will nonetheless advocate beef tallow soaps to raised protect ink.

By the Nineteen Nineties, advances in beauty chemistry favored plant-based and artificial alternate options that provided larger stability and consistency. Safety concerns surrounding bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow illness) additionally prompted corporations to distance themselves from animal-derived components. Although byproducts like collagen, hyaluronic acid, and keratin advanced with trendy skincare, tallow was (largely) left behind.

However now, beef tallow is again.

This revival is a part of a cultural obsession with ancestral dwelling. It’s the identical impulse driving the recognition of the carnivore food plan, bone broth, and unpasteurized milk. Grand View Research reports 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 rich in triglycerides and in addition incorporates important nutritional vitamins A, D, Okay, E, and B12. Some research recommend that tallow can improve fatty acid focus within the pores and skin, making it a moisturizing agent. Nonetheless, comparative studies have discovered that alternate options like pumpkin seed oil and linoleic acid supply superior hydration. Whereas some may tout its “pure” advantages, that phrase is extra advertising and marketing than truth.