Beef tallow has been embraced by wellness influencers and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Here's what health experts think about the creamy saturated fat.
Create your free profile or log in to save this article Create your free profile or log in to save this article It's creamy. It's a type of saturated fat. And according to a slew of lifestyle and wellness influencers, it's "good" for your body and skin. Beef tallow, the fat that remains after meat is boiled, has become the latest craze to gain momentum online, with some creators touting it as a skin care product and others calling it the healthier alternative to "seed oils" like canola and safflower oil. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also promoted tallow. While eating fries and a burger at a Steak 'n Shake during a Fox News interview last week, he praised the restaurant chain for cooking with the fat rather than with vegetable oil. (HHS and the White House did not respond to NBC News' request for comment.) Both the diet and skin care worlds are popular social media niches that can quickly cycle through trendy ideas that range from reasonably effective to bizarre. The infatuation with tallow appears to be one of the few times their content focuses on the same product. But some dermatologists and nutrition experts said they do not recommend incorporating high levels of beef tallow into diet or skin care regimens. On skin, one dermatologist said, tallow could cause acne rather than eliminate it. For cooking, some nutritionists said beef tallow may even be worse than seed oils. "Beef tallow deserves neither a health halo nor devil's horns," Dariush Mozaffarian, director of Tufts University's Food is Medicine Institute, said in an email. Tallow touted as an oil alternative In mid-January, Steak 'n Shake announced it would pivot to cooking french fries with beef tallow. In his interview at one of the chain's locations, Kennedy said Americans "are poisoning ourselves, and it's coming principally from these ultraprocessed foods." "President Trump wants us to have radical transparency and incentivize companies like this one to…