Is beef tallow making a comeback?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I thought the candle wax consistency was a coincidence, but it was the main way to make candles for most of history. It tastes pretty good but has a strong smell when cooking (or burning as a candle, presumably).
Yes this is biased towards English/American definitions of room temperature, but either they are both at room temperature or not.
I'm afraid to ask but regardless: you use the lard as a replacement for oil when frying/cooking fries, or as like a condiment/sauce/something?
Yeah I bet, but with Americans you never know, I've seen people pour melted processed butter across popcorn, so when it comes to what Americans eat, I've learned to always ask rather than assume.
[0] https://fireinabottle.net/every-fire-in-a-bottle-post-from-t...
EDIT: I'm sympathetic to Brad's argument and I'm concerned that RFK Jr's incompetence will interfere with ongoing research in this area of metabolism.
However, the problem is that the public has also come to that conclusion. The public has gone on to decide "that means my incredibly weakly-evidenced idea is just as good as the expert opinions" which does not follow and is often disastrously wrong.
So I'm also sympathetic to the idea that the saturated fat picture is more complex than a blanket ban suggests. But I know better than to treat things like Brad's arguments as anything other than "interesting hypothesis" as opposed to "something we actually know about nutrition."
On what basis? Using the list of smoke point table someone else linked[1], tallow does indeed have a high smoke point, but it's unclear how it's better than many other oils in that list (peanut, sunflower, soybean) which are far easier to procure.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Smoke_point_of_cookin...
Yeah, but lived experience shows that a lot of people do.
Lived experience is definitely weak evidence because it is riddled with bias. This is why we have blinded studies.
I can spend decades eating junk food and lose weight as long as I work out long enough and hard enough. My "lived experience" tells me that junk food is fine simply because it hasn't killed me yet.
[0] 80-90% of people describe themselves as an "above-average" driver.
What shape is the distribution of driving ability? It seems entirely plausible that most drivers are decent and a smaller population are bad enough to pull the mean down well below the median.
The public are presented with things that are weakly evidenced as scientifically proven. After all, the one study that says something is good or bad for you was published in a peer-reviewed journal and the university PR people blogged about it and the newspapers reported it uncritically.
A lot of experts are very bad at differing between different levels of evidence and probability: "my personal (if expert) opinion", "a consensus in the field" and "backed by reasonable evidence" and "proven" are very different but all often get presented the same way.
The problem is that a bunch of talk about weak studies and probabilities and personal thoughts is not what grabs attention. The few overconfident loudmouths end up being the ones everybody hears from. And you don't even need to be an expert, you just need to sound like one.
If you're a nutrition scientist who really knows their stuff and knows how to talk to people so that they understand just what is really known and how well it's known, how in the world do you compete with someone like RFK Jr.?
They know, and are clear about it with their peers but many are very bad at communicating it to the public. There are also experts who are overly attached to their pet theories, or biased, and communicate those things to the public as fact.There are experts who are patronising enough patronising enough to think its not even worth trying to explain things properly to the public.
> The problem is that a bunch of talk about weak studies and probabilities and personal thoughts is not what grabs attention. The few overconfident loudmouths end up being the ones everybody hears from. And you don't even need to be an expert, you just need to sound like one.
All true, Which is why I blame the media as well.
> If you're a nutrition scientist who really knows their stuff and knows how to talk to people so that they understand just what is really known and how well it's known, how in the world do you compete with someone like RFK Jr.?
Good question! The only real solution is better science education, and to keep on plugging away.The most harmful thing is the common perception that experts hand down the truth, rather than understanding the nature of scientific evidence.
Does Brad Marshall mention that Palmitic acid is the dominant fatty acid in tallow? And since Palmitic acid is the most abundant SFA in the U.S. diet, can we draw a conclusion that it may partially play a role in poor health outcomes?
PUFA suppress lipogenic gene expression so I do not know where anyone is getting that polyunsaturated fats have and obesogenic effect. [1]
But if you really want to talk about fallacies, why is no one talking about how genetics can determine who these fatty acids are good and bad for? making blanket recommendation for a specific food without knowing someones genetics and heritage is foolish. But do a search for nutritional genetics on HN....nothing.
I don't know the answer to question #1 but the answer to question #2 is "no, we cannot draw that conclusion" because of the fallacy of composition.
That last one is not necessarily a bad thing. You haven’t truly had popcorn till you’ve had beef tallow popcorn.
It works really well with certain foods. As an example, poutine is quite popular now. A classic poutine calls for a brown sauce, which is a gravy made with equal parts beef and chicken stock. If you cook the fries in beef tallow, you get the full depth of the brown sauce.
Or if someone you really like is coming over for a steak and some beers make steak frites. Blanch the fries first, let them dry completely, deep fry them, let them cool and then when the steaks are cooling, put some tallow in the cast iron, let it flash and then drop your fries in to fry them a final time.
This concludes this week’s episode of Cooking with Greg where I impart food knowledge that tried to kill me. Tune in next week when I talk about more of the reasons I had a heart attack in my late thirties. :)
Wouldn't beef tallow be along the same line? It's seems contradictory that beef tallow is the next greatest thing yet also ramping up inflammation internally. I can't square the circle here (I haven't done a deep dive though).
[Edit: I looked into it --> Beef uniquely raises ApoB-containing particles in susceptible people + Saturated fat from beef down-regulates LDL receptors].
[Edit 2: Beef tallow is worse than eating beef since it is a concentrated version of what I wrote about in edit 1]
Just from a cursory search, you can find tons of studies supporting this. It is not a controversial statement at all in scientific nutrition and medical fields.
Some studies:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11537864/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33951994/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-30455-9
I think it's significant however that unhealthy plant based diets show increased mortality, so it's important to pay attention to what you eat in any case.
It's also worth keeping in mind conflicts of interest and cultural aspects. I think probably there are strong interests in the side of animal products, although this is partisan in the US (and surely there is some lobbying from the opposite direction as well). Also I think culturally there's strong preference for animal products, in particular meat and beef consumption, almost everywhere. Of course, science is supposed to be resistant to conflicts of interest (and it is usually mandatory to disclose funding conflicts of interest), but not all studies are the same. Those conflicts being mostly in the other direction give me additional confidence there isn't a strong bias from those sources.
Also I always like to mention you should supplement a plant based diet, with vitamin B12 and usually a few other vitamins.
---
Also, for the more literally minded, it's obviously not simply due to the atoms from your food source having come from animals most recently that they're unhealthy, so it's also obviously theoretically possible to produce healthy animal-based foods (if only by transmuting their atoms with nuclear reactions), it's the particular proteins, fats and other compounds typically found tend to interact in unhealthy ways with our system.
But that said it's also very significant (in favor of plants) that animals often suffer a lot in the production of those food products, and whether or not you consume them you have the responsibility to diminish their suffering.
Totally different chemical classes for your body to respond to.
I would end up with a 1/2 gallon of foie gras infused (normal) duck fat.
Decided to make french fries using it. It was the best fries I have ever had.
Nonetheless, I would never eat like that today.
How is lard meaningfully different than tallow or vegetable oil? Being animal fat, isn't it approximately the same as tallow?
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3t902pqt3C7nGN99hV...
I prefer lard because it's slightly lower in saturated than tallow, and doesn't alter taste so much.
Avocado oil has a smoke point of 500F, which is what I use for high heat cooking. By contrast lard is only 370F, which means it supplies less flexibility than avocado oil.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Smoke_point_of_cookin...
What this matters isn't clear of course.
> Bread grows on trees, apparently
Whereas beef tallow smells of roast beef.
I guess I'm old now, because I remember when it was a big deal that McDonald's switched from using tallow.
Deep frying your fries in beef tallow is an absolutely incredible experience, each bite is so rich and satisfying. We definitely lost something in the switch.
Just go back to beef tallow fries. Even if it’s more expensive, the marketing could bring back more customers.
Worst case, they could increase the cost, and people would probably still pay it, given the current hype around tallow and people’s love for the former tallow fries.
Then something changed in the 90s. I've been told it was a switch from frying in beef tallow to using vegetable oil.
It's just disgusting now.
This would then be used for frying etc.. I imagine my parents would have used it when they were young for "dripping" sandwiches.
Maybe this was just a UK thing?
I don't doubt that one can find health benefits in beef tallow. But I also vividly remember ads in the 80s and 90s that promoted the health benefits of seed oils and margarines, which years later proved to be cherry-picked facts. So, I'm skeptical on whether we have the same thing happening, only now it is beef tallow that is promoted by cherry-picking studies.
And frankly, RFKs "new pyramid" is at least misguided, if not worse. Bread and grains at the bottom of the pyramid make no sense. In mediterranean countries (e.g. Italy, Greece, Spain) bread and pasta are on the table in ample quantities every single day. And guess who has longer life expectancy than the US.
Saturated fat looks good when you replace trans fat
Red meat looks to be neutral when you eeplace refined grains
Doesn't mean there aren't better options though
Relatedly, it is crazy to me that people don't see the value in gender studies as an academic field when so much of the past couple years has revolved around gender.
The "X for MEN" trend, for example, exists in the context of decades of "X for WOMEN" products. The Man Shake (TM) is a product that only exists because Slimfast (TM) has already convinced the world that meal replacement shakes are for women.
I can see why The Man Shake is stupid, but I don't understand how Slimfast was any better. Nor do I understand why The Man Shake is masculinisation but Slimfast isn't feminisation. Nor why one should be seen as exploitative advertising targeting insecurities, while the other is an intentional political effort.
What has changed is we have learned that fat isn't as bad as it was made out to be - it doesn't seem to have as large an effect on health as thought 40 years ago. That doesn't mean it is healthy - though some take it that way.
It was once observed that vegetarians being healthier than others could be explained almost entirely by vegetarians being less likely to smoke - something studies generally didn't even try to control for and so we don't know if that observation is true. There could be some other unknown factor in play as well that because it is unknown we can't control for it.
Bread varies a lot and yeah we have some terrible breads, I don't buy them but someone must because they keep selling them
Well, it's a response to the green/eco push for making do with protein from insects and plants only and that it's bad and wrong to have nice things because global warming and sustainability.
It's not a "something died for this so therefore it's better", it's "stop commanding me to not have nice things".
The pushback against "institutional nutrition" has been a long time coming and is honestly welcomed as health and nutrition science have evolved from the days of telling us to avoid all fat and offering consumers "low calorie" processed foods that didn't do our bodies much good.
In the same way the bacon craze of the 2000s was a successful marketing effort from pork farmers, cattle farmers (and their lobbying groups) are now having a moment with beef and subsequent beef products. Good nutritional science has been pointing to many fats (but not all fats) actually being good for our diet, contrary to those old institutional guidelines, but there's a lot of nuance around adding fats back to a person's diet. Many aren't making the distinction between saturated vs unsaturated fat as well as UDL and LDL cholesterol that ends up in our bloodstream (one of those is not good for us!).
But in an era of memes, misinformation, and context collapse good luck trying to have that more complicated discussion with people when the nutritional aspect is brought up (the book is closed on the flavor debate of course, it's delicious)
Is beef tallow a better option for a cooking fat? I think it is.
Politics aside, the omega6:3 ratio and PUFA content of tallow is favorable.
That changes my perception from "maybe that's a good point" to "spammers should die painfully."
Olive oil? Peanut oil? No and (mostly) no.
Compared to hydrogenated margarine that was pushed a couple of decades ago before we learned about trans-fats? Of course.
If you use it when cooking for guests, you should disclose that you're using it (especially for non-meat dishes) because it may add extra fat that they're not OK with or consider inappropriate for personal dietary consumption (they're vegetarian, don't eat beef products, whatever).
I have a friend for whom we can't use anything that has sunflower oil in it, which is _really hard to avoid_ in surprising ways (there are spice blends that I use which have a bit of sunflower oil in the mixes).
Arguably the "healthiest" cooking oil is olive oil. If we're looking at just the fatty acids though, replacing SFA with PUFAs is a stronger predictor of lower CVD and all-cause mortality.
That sort of overwhelms the omega ratios. As I understand it, both fish oil and (fresh) flax seed oil are still better than tallow.
With RFK's dismantling of good science, politics can't be put aside, as his reasons are essentially "because I said so".
Canola and other seed oils are made using toxic solvents which are not full removed from the final product.
Sydney heart diet study: Seed oil group had something like 62% higher death rate.
Minnesota coronary experiment: replaced saturated fats with seed oil, cholesterol dropped, but for every 30 mg/dL drop risk of death went up something like 20%.
Several recent meta analyses also indicate no real benefit migrating from saturated fats to seed oils. The only silver lining I have seen is there is some evidence replacing them for people who have had a coronary event already. So, no, I don't think the evidence supports "seed oils do much better" in a general sense.
Actually on a quick check the sydney study looks to be the exact same
This is simply untrue. Independent bodies all over the world regularly test commercially available oils for toxic solvents. While the solvent Hexane is indeed commonly used in the extraction of refined vegetable oils, it is later removed in the refining process.
For example Stiftung Warentest, an independent consumer advocacy organization tested 23 rapeseed oils available in German supermarkets and they all came out clean [1].
A few years earlier, they tested 25 "specialty oils" and found traces of Hexane in only one of them - but still way below the EU threshold of 1 mg/kg. [2]
Here is a study from Japan that tested a bunch of vegetable oils and came to the conclusion that none of the products contained dangerous levels of Hexane. The maximum amount the researchers found was 42.6 µg/kg (again way below the EU threshold) - but in most samples the amount they found was so low they couldn't even get a reading or they didn't find any Hexane at all.
Besides, for cold-pressed oils, no solvents are used at all.
[1] https://www.test.de/Rapsoel-im-Test-1816151-0/
[2] https://www.test.de/Gourmet-Oele-Fast-jedes-zweite-ist-mange...
[3] https://openaccesspub.org/experimental-and-clinical-toxicolo...
Unless you're claiming that it tastes better, then sure, beef tallow is pretty tasty.
If you are eating french fries twice a week - which seems to be common - they are bad for you. Clean up your diet, eat a larger variety of food.
Better compared to what? Better than refined canola? Probably. Better than good quality, cold-pressed vegetable oils? Probably not. It's not great for heart health.
I've made this example before, but it bears repeating.
I know absolutely nothing about chemistry, medicine, or healthcare policy. I am wholly unqualifed to be in charge of anything involving healthcare. Suppose that, despite all reason, I am appointed into a HHS secretary anyway. This would be bad, but because I know that I know nothing, my potential for damage is actually pretty limited. I would have to defer a lot of decisions to advisors, who would likely be doctors and chemists and data scientists. I probably wouldn't make a lot of "progress", and I would likely more or less just maintain the status quo, but I probably wouldn't make things much worse.
RFK Jr. is the worst, because he doesn't know any more about health or medicine than I do, but because he's read a bunch of idiotic blogs and Facebook pages he thinks he knows better than the entire medical establishment, and because he thinks he knows everything he feels qualified to start cutting funding for American medical research and blame everything on people not eating enough beef fat.
People have been (understandably) focusing on Trump's descent into authoritarianism, but it's possible that that gets somewhat fixed once he's out of office, but I think that the damage that RFK Jr. has done to our medical research establishment might be irreparable. He is uniquely dangerous.
Yet still here we are
If you look at pseudoscience "alternative health" treatments on YouTube, they always have some disclaimer saying "This is not medical advice, I am not a physician, please consult your doctor", and then immediately go on to tell you about how injecting yourself with ozone or drinking paint thinner will cure all your diseases. I think it's just a legal disclaimer, not like they are actually aware that what they're doing is bullshit.
I think you have missed the part about why we are in this situation.
People are absolutely fed up with the medical establishment. There is no way to twist this.
Now, everyone trying to fix the medical establishment is immediately called an anti vaxxer, science denier, etc.
At some point it was inevitable that we get someone who can shrug these labels off because they do not have a scientific reputation that can be killed with these labels.
My point is, again, we are in this situation because sane attempts to fix things has not worked. To an extent that people will literally try anything.
It's funny that my point about 'every attempt to fix the medical establishment is branded as science denial' was branded as science denial :)
Nice recursive proof.
That's because the thought leaders who are fed up with the medical establishment are gaining traction by spreading anti-vax and science denial ideas and not calling out specific medical establishment (other than "big pharma is a boogie man!"). So, it's hard to take their position seriously (even though, I too and anti medical establishment)
I meant - the medical establishment is notorious for attacking every opposition, especially when it comes to policy, with those labels.
That guarantees scientists who stand to lose their careers won't bother trying to fix anything. That's how you get asshats like RFK Jr.
Well they keep showing up with shitty unverified claims...are we supposed to treat their shitty claims as valid just because they're against the grain?
It's also good to keep an eye on the graft. It's funny how pretty much every big personality in the alt-med space has totally awesome products to sell you that Big Science won't let you know about.
I claim that every credible opposition to the medical establishment has been branded as science denial for decades, so much that scientists and researchers won't even bother any more for the sake of their careers.
That's how you get the people you are talking about.
My own memory of opposition to the medical establishment in past decades inevitably flows to homeopathy, colloidal silver, and other nonsense. There's always been a lot of kooks and grifters trying to make a buck off the gullible by playing on their paranoia.
I'll leave out mrna vaccines and gender related examples to avoid politically charged examples and people missing the forest for the trees.
Here are some more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Abramson (Read his book!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Olivieri
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Healy_(psychiatrist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Oldham_Kelsey
You can google the general topic and see that there are hundreds more, but none of these individuals managed to become prominent or well known because they just gave up.
I haven't read the article ("too hard, didn't care"), but as a foodie:
- in certain food circles, it never went away - industrially, McD's in at least North America used beef tallow as one of the par-frying oils for their fries well into the 21st century -- which caused a stir amongst vegetarians and Hindu who had assumed that the fries were vegetarian (I remember stories here in Canada in 2002-2003) - beef tallow is now fascionable, which accounts for the reactionary resurgence for something that never really went away - the science is very clear that the new guidance from RFK's worm-eaten brain is junk - the science is also very clear that while saturated fats like beef tallow are bad for you compared to olive oil and seed oils, they're better than hydrogenated fats and trans-fat products that were pushed on the world for a couple of decades a couple of decades ago
Beef tallow is a net good inasmuch as it helps ensure whole animal use, but that doesn't make it healthy or suitable for all diets.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
I recommend reading the article.
Source for Americans needing more omega-6-fatty-acid intake?
> seed oils
Do we have evidence around seed oils? Or is this the new homeopathy?
I expect that, to the extent there's a problem, it's that they are an additive to most packaged/ultra-processed food products which can be non-satiating, and therefore boosts overall consumption of fats and calories. Sugar of course is another component.
But the reality is that there's insufficient science for the promotion of beef tallow in RFK's health treason. For large groups of people it's off limits due to personal dietary restrictions (religious or animal product avoidance) and would be contraindicated for anyone who currently has cardiovascular diseases involving high cholesterol.
Use beef tallow, don't use beef tallow. I don't care unless I'm possibly eating food that you have prepared or manufactured (because I don't want rendered animal fats in my food). But don't pretend that it's a health food. It isn't, but can still be eaten in moderation by anyone who _doesn't_ mind beef products in their food.
So you’re proposing that the FDA should promote a vegan diet to cater to the lowest common denominator?
What I said is the FDA shouldn’t be promoting junk recommendations as if it were gold-standard science.
There are good scientific reasons to avoid animal fats in one’s diet. There are no good scientific reasons to add them back to one’s diet.
In moderation, they aren’t harmful and may indeed improve the flavour or texture of certain dishes when had in moderation. I personally love making butter sage gnocchi or ravioli (it doesn’t work as well with olive oil), but I only make it every couple of months.
Beyond everything else, we know that replacing animal protein with plant protein is a good way to improve health. But it’s not accessible or acceptable to everyone. It’s also not necessarily a good use of some land — land that might be perfectly suited to raising goats is poor for growing crops for human consumption.
With appropriate fortified foods (synthesized bacterial sources adding B12 to nutritional yeast, plant milks, etc.), vegans don't need to worry about it either.
A quick bit of research suggests that as much at 16% of meat eaters have B12 deficiency, so it's a systemic problem.
For some foods the being-solid-at-room-temperature property can be important for texture.
But the premise of the original article (that beef tallow ever went away, which is required for a comeback) is deeply flawed, and the fascionable junk science from RFK is the dumbest possible reason to use beef tallow.
Just don't expect me (a vegetarian) to eat anything that has beef tallow, and expect me to be very pissed off if I later learn a restaurant or food manufacturer uses beef tallow without disclosing it, because that's taking choice away from me.
Everything I've read says that McDonald's switched globally to vegetable oil in the early 1990s. I think you've misremembered.