Is Beef Tallow Healthy?

If you’ve purchased a beef share from us before, you may have asked to receive the fat.

If you did, kudos. 

Often considered a waste product of a beef share, tallow offers a variety of benefits that are worth discussing, but unfortunately, it’s gotten a bit of a bad rap over the years. 

We explore why in this post (and the truth):

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What is Tallow Used For?

First up, what exactly is tallow?

Let’s clear up some confusion first: tallow and lard are NOT the same thing, though some people refer to them synonymously. Lard comes from a pig, while tallow comes from a cow. 

A white substance, tallow becomes solid at room temperature and is made from simmering and clarifying the fatty tissue that surrounds the organs of ruminant animals (so, yes, technically, sheep or deer fat could also be coined “tallow”). 

Beef tallow is excellent for cooking at high temperatures, like roasting or frying, but it also has a number of non-food applications. In fact, it is often used in soaps, candles, and skincare products. 

Lard, on the other hand, is ideal for baked goods, since it has a softer texture (if you have never had a pie crust made with lard, you’re missing out). You can also use lard (or tallow) to make things like suet.

Is Beef Tallow Healthy?

For many years, tallow, along with other animal fats like lard and butter, was vilified by the health and wellness community. If you were raised in the ‘80s, ‘90s, or early 2000s, you probably remember those sickly yellow tubs of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” that we all had in our childhood refrigerators. Spoiler alert, I can believe it’s not butter. 

For several decades, the USDA guidelines scared people away from animal fats, arguing that they would give people heart attacks. Before 1910, people in the US almost exclusively used animal fats, including butter, in their food. 

Rich in saturated fatty acids (making them fats that become solid at room temperature), these foods were readily available since most people raised their own food. Vegetable oils, which are primarily unsaturated fats, were virtually unheard of in cooking, used instead to make lubricants, candles, and soaps.

The Rise of Oils

Vegetable oils became more popular as the process of hulling and pressing seeds and beans became mechanized. The vegetable oil companies embarked on an aggressive marketing campaign to sell their products, arguing that they were healthier and easier to digest. Enter, Crisco. 

Incidences of heart attacks began to rise steeply in the 1950s. Studies showed that a high fat intake, particularly of saturated fat, raises the level of total cholesterol in the blood, a risk factor for heart disease.

What researchers didn’t realize right away, however, was that eating fat did not necessarily equate to being fat, that the way our bodies deal with different types of fats does differ. 

Total cholesterol levels in the blood don’t always correlate with a risk for heart disease because the measurement includes LDL (bad) cholesterol and HDL (good) cholesterol). Interestingly, we now know that saturated fats raise HDL cholesterol more than any other type of fat and may be able to offset some of the harmful effects of LDL cholesterol. 

The problem with much of the research that was published prior to 1980 was that it was based on epidemiological data, in other words, information collected about the distribution and patterns of disease in the form of nonexperimental observations. 

Conclusions were made based on the fact that people from countries that consumed higher amounts of saturated fats (like the United States) died from heart disease at a higher clip than those who ate less saturated fat (like Greece and Japan). 

But they only proved correlation - not causation. The observations failed to note that other diet or lifestyle factors could be causing the deaths - namely, the fact that people who tended to eat higher amounts of saturated fat also tended to consume more sugar.

In the wake of the low-fat diet craze, this wasn’t something we wanted to pay much attention to. Yet years of studies have now shown that eating foods rich in cholesterol (like eggs - remember how much of a bad rap they got?) does not actually raise cholesterol levels in the blood or lead to heart disease. And nor does saturated fat. 

Sugar’s Secrets

There were lots of other factors working behind the scenes here, too, namely the secretive funding of research in the 1960s by the sugar industry. The goal of this backdoor deal was to downplay the health risks of sugar and place fat as the ultimate scapegoat. If Americans could be persuaded to eat low-fat, they would need to replace those fat calories with sugar. Sugar, particularly sugary drinks like soda, are linked to higher levels of LDL cholesterol and lower levels of HDL. There’s no balancing effect there.

Even though the door has been blown wide open on the nutritional ruse funded by Big Sugar, the reality is that we still have a lot of work to do in unraveling our misconceptions about fat. 

Although the keto diet may have taken things one step too far (most nutritionists don’t think putting sticks of butter in your coffee is a great idea, either), the reality is that animal fats can and should be part of a balanced diet (if you eschew animal products for reasons by health, of course, this is not meant to apply to you). 

Where to Buy Beef Tallow?

If you’ve been putting off trying tallow or lard or any other animal fat because you’re concerned about your heart, I recommend reading into it a bit more. I’m obviously not a doctor and won’t give you medical advice, but I can say that tallow and lard (particularly when sourced from animals that are fed a well-rounded diet, ideally as much grass as possible in the case of cattle, and no “garbage” like sweets and bread for pigs) is quite healthy. 

Tallow contains conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which is an omega-6 fat found in animal fats linked to the prevention of plaque buildup in the arteries. It also contains fat-soluble vitamins that support bone health, immune health, cellular function, and even skin health. 

If you’re feeling intimidated about the process of rendering your own tallow, don’t be. If you can boil a pot of water, you can render tallow or lard. I’m happy to provide advice on how to do so. 

Remember, if you choose to purchase a share of beef or pork from us, you can always request your tallow or lard back. 

Well, that’s enough chewing the fat for one day, I suppose…