The Beef Tallow Skin Care Trend Smells Like a Scam

Who needs vaccines and Vanicream, erstwhile you person earthy beverage and beef tallow? That’s what the net thinks, anyway. TikTok (or TallowTok) is presently slathered with devotees hailing beef tallow (yes, the rendered abdominous from a cow) arsenic a occurrence moisturizer. As of March 2025, determination person been much than 68.5 cardinal posts connected tallow. Brands currency in, portion influencers flaunt before-and-after transformations, render tallow from suet, oregon smear beef lard connected their skin, thinking it’s tallow (it’s not).

The backlash against industrialized quality mirrors anxieties astir ultra-processed food. The aforesaid radical avoiding effect oils successful their diets are present seeking beef-fat balms for their faces—it’s not a coincidence that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is selling “Making Frying Oil Tallow Again” merch. But successful a unreserved to destruct toxins and instrumentality it to large corporations, you whitethorn person overlooked different risks. I bought immoderate connected the net and smeared it connected myself to fig it out.

A Brief History of Tallow

Cow abdominous arsenic look pick is not arsenic acold retired arsenic you mightiness think. For centuries, terrestrial carnal fats—beef tallow, lard, and lanolin—were staples successful tegument care. The Babylonians utilized ash and rendered abdominous to trade soap. Over time, tallow recovered its mode into early-candle-making and medicinal remedies. Nineteenth-century ointments relied connected them to dainty everything from burns and chapped tegument to wounds and ingrown nails. Traditional soap was a premix of tallow and coconut oil, and aboriginal lipsticks blended carnal abdominous and beeswax. Some tattoo artists volition inactive urge beef tallow soaps to amended sphere ink.

By the 1990s, advances successful cosmetic chemistry favored plant-based and synthetic alternatives that offered greater stableness and consistency. Safety concerns surrounding bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cattle disease) besides prompted companies to region themselves from animal-derived ingredients. Though byproducts similar collagen, hyaluronic acid, and keratin evolved with modern tegument care, tallow was (mostly) near behind.

But now, beef tallow is back.

This revival is portion of a taste obsession with ancestral living. It’s the aforesaid impulse driving the popularity of the carnivore diet, bony broth, and unpasteurized milk. Grand View Research reports that the U.S. tallow marketplace brought successful $627.9 cardinal successful 2023 and is projected to surpass $1 cardinal by 2030. At its halfway is the rejection of modernity, the content that industrialization has corrupted quality and that the past held purer solutions. The quality industry, with its preservatives, emulsifiers, and laboratory formulations, has go the enemy. Tallow, by contrast, is framed arsenic a instrumentality to the untainted.

Beef tallow is affluent successful triglycerides and besides contains indispensable vitamins A, D, K, E, and B12. Some studies suggest that tallow tin summation fatty acerb attraction successful the skin, making it a moisturizing agent. However, comparative studies person recovered that alternatives similar pumpkin effect lipid and linoleic acerb connection superior hydration. While immoderate mightiness tout its “natural” benefits, that connection is much selling than fact.