I made it a few years ago. Tallow is trendy (and thus expensive), but you make it by rendering suet which is basically a throw-away product at butcher shops. Lots don't even bother selling suet, which is a pain. Rendering was just slow-cooking and removing the little pieces, then you're left with candle wax you can cook with.
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).
Brad Marshall[0] makes a case for the benefits of stearic acid (C18:0), which is predominant in beef tallow and cocoa butter. It acts as a beneficial metabolic signal that promotes mitochondrial fat oxidation, higher energy expenditure, and leanness—counteracting the obesogenic effects of polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs), especially linoleic acid.
We all know there has been a replication crisis across many different disciplines of science. I think that the set of things we actually know about nutrition and health is a lot smaller than the experts think.
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."
>but it seems like a really good high flash point oil.
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.
Most people do not live near "beef operations". Moreover processing tallow is part of procurement. If you value your time at the prevailing minimum wage, it's pretty hard to beat a gallon of vegetable oil for $10.
It's kind of mentioned in the article, but I'm more comfortable cooking with lard than either tallow or oil based on the current evidence. Avoiding UPF is probably the most important factor though.
Pretty much all, if not all, cooking oils/fats when heated past the smoke point create this problem.
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.
sadly one of the most frustrating things is that everyone groups saturated fats in one big group. there is lots of evidence that only specific types of saturated fats actually cause CVD, in particular some specific configurations of palmitic acid. the other saturated fats are not nearly as problem causing.
UPF as in ultra-processed food? UPF designations are farcical; they're a modern formally-ratified instance of the naturalist fallacy. There are attributes of ultra-processed foods that are bad, but it's not the ultra-processing that makes it so; it's a very "correlation is causation" situation.
The fundamental problem with UPF isn't the nutritional qualities of the food. It's the _process_ itself. UPF is basically derived from A/B testing food continuously to making it (a) highly consumable and (b) low cost. Repeat that process over decades and thousands of times and you get overconsumption of shit food.
I think you mean highly palatable. Hyperpalatability is a real problem. But that's not intrinsic to "ultra-processing"; there are lots of reasons to "ultra-process" foods that aren't about maximizing caloric input.
I mean, that's not as far as I know an actual commonly-used metric but it's closely enough aligned with hyperpalatability that I think the distinction doesn't matter.
I was looking for duck fat to roast some potatoes in. The store didn't have it but they did have beef tallow. I gave it a shot. Worked great. I'd get it again
It's probably still better to avoid eating french fries regardless of what they're fried in. That would probably lead to better health outcomes regardless.
Unless you're claiming that it tastes better, then sure, beef tallow is pretty tasty.
> Canola and other seed oils are made using toxic solvents which are not full removed from the final product.
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.
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.
I don't have time to look into the sydney heart study but I know for the minnesota experiment they, not knowing how bad it was at the time, used margarine with high trans fats as the replacements. Also had a huge 95% drop out rate
Actually on a quick check the sydney study looks to be the exact same
Look at a meta review. There are a ton of these studies and the overwhelming evidence is that saturated fat is associated with CVD and ACM, PUFAs are not.
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).
Tallow is still higher in long chain SFAs than vegetable saturated fats, which are less healthy than short and medium chain SFAs (but neither is as good as PUFAs).
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".
Omega ratio matters most taking total intake of 3 and 6 into account. Since tallow is overwhelmingly saturated fat, it's a moot point what the ratio is. The remedy to low omega-3 is just to consume more dominant EPA/DHA and even ALA sources. Omega 6 won't fly off the charts except through consuming lots of packaged boxed foods and ultraprocessed foods, which overwhelming use vegetable oils like soybean or sunflower (North American fat consumption has skyrocketed over a century mostly owing to these foods). Even if you consume some nuts or seed oil now and then, just consume fish or a supplement.
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.
Our own health department has completely removed objectivity from their process. It doesn't matter if they say something right or wrong now, they've completely lost our trust.
He's almost the perfect example of the colloquial stereotype of "Dunning Kruger Syndrome", which is why he's so dangerous.
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.
I think he's actively lying with this to have some amount of plausible deniability.
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.
As an outside observer of this beef tallow trend, it looks to me a lot like a fad driven by some internalized machismo: "It's not proper food if it's not from a dead animal." While this is not unique to the US, apparently believers of this in the US reached a critical mass enough to make it public policy.
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.
I listened to Malcom Gladwell talking about how McDonald’s switched from beef tallow, and decided to try the double fry method using tallow for myself.
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.
Not to be flippant, but we know that the answer to that is "No" because of Betteridge's Law of Headlines[1].
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.
If you are deep frying, for e.g. french fries, any cooking oil that is solid at room temperature can keep them from being greasy. This includes beef tallow, but also coconut oil for a vegetable-based oil.
For some foods the being-solid-at-room-temperature property can be important for texture.
I have no disagreement with this and I think I said as much.
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.
I won't bother as I'm vegetarian, which means that I really don't care the "supposed" benefits (which likely pale compared to the ingestion of long chain saturated fats present in beef tallow, as opposed to the short and medium chain saturated fats present in coconut oil). Beef tallow is irrelevant to me except for restaurateurs or food manufacturers who use it without disclosing it. (One should disclose its use in any case. For people who avoid pork, knowing that your product contains "beef lard" instead of "whatever lard was cheapest this week" matters, because they can't do "pork lard".)
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.
Evidence for the negative effects of omega 6s and specifically seed oils is at best fuzzy and conflicting, plenty of studies have found little to no difference. Research on the subject is as best inconclusive.
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.
I made it a few years ago. Tallow is trendy (and thus expensive), but you make it by rendering suet which is basically a throw-away product at butcher shops. Lots don't even bother selling suet, which is a pain. Rendering was just slow-cooking and removing the little pieces, then you're left with candle wax you can cook with.
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).
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Brad Marshall[0] makes a case for the benefits of stearic acid (C18:0), which is predominant in beef tallow and cocoa butter. It acts as a beneficial metabolic signal that promotes mitochondrial fat oxidation, higher energy expenditure, and leanness—counteracting the obesogenic effects of polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs), especially linoleic acid.
[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.
We all know there has been a replication crisis across many different disciplines of science. I think that the set of things we actually know about nutrition and health is a lot smaller than the experts think.
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."
Lived experience is not really weak evidence though. Personally I use tallow minimally but it seems like a really good high flash point oil.
>but it seems like a really good high flash point oil.
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...
Anyone who lives near beef operations can get unprocessed tallow for free.
Most people do not live near "beef operations". Moreover processing tallow is part of procurement. If you value your time at the prevailing minimum wage, it's pretty hard to beat a gallon of vegetable oil for $10.
Tallow is popular right now, but plain old butter is just as good, easier to work with, and doesn't make everything it touches taste like beef.
The main point of cooking with any oil that isn't a neutral oil is to impart the flavor into the food.
> and doesn't make everything it touches taste like beef.
That last one is not necessarily a bad thing. You haven’t truly had popcorn till you’ve had beef tallow popcorn.
I used to work across the street from a “New Southern” style eatery, beef tallow biscuits are to die for.
Why would confidently assert this? They are very different and useful for different purposes. Do you cook at all?
Might wanna put some shoes on before you deep fry your turkey.
It's kind of mentioned in the article, but I'm more comfortable cooking with lard than either tallow or oil based on the current evidence. Avoiding UPF is probably the most important factor though.
>but I'm more comfortable cooking with lard than either tallow or oil based on the current evidence
How is lard meaningfully different than tallow or vegetable oil? Being animal fat, isn't it approximately the same as tallow?
The concern I have with vegetable oil is if you heat it past the smoke point, you end up creating toxic compounds. The saturated fats are most stable.
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.
Pretty much all, if not all, cooking oils/fats when heated past the smoke point create this problem.
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...
sadly one of the most frustrating things is that everyone groups saturated fats in one big group. there is lots of evidence that only specific types of saturated fats actually cause CVD, in particular some specific configurations of palmitic acid. the other saturated fats are not nearly as problem causing.
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UPF as in ultra-processed food? UPF designations are farcical; they're a modern formally-ratified instance of the naturalist fallacy. There are attributes of ultra-processed foods that are bad, but it's not the ultra-processing that makes it so; it's a very "correlation is causation" situation.
The fundamental problem with UPF isn't the nutritional qualities of the food. It's the _process_ itself. UPF is basically derived from A/B testing food continuously to making it (a) highly consumable and (b) low cost. Repeat that process over decades and thousands of times and you get overconsumption of shit food.
I think you mean highly palatable. Hyperpalatability is a real problem. But that's not intrinsic to "ultra-processing"; there are lots of reasons to "ultra-process" foods that aren't about maximizing caloric input.
No, I mean consumable, as in spending dollars to buy a product. Palatability is an input to consumption. It drives consumption and profit.
I mean, that's not as far as I know an actual commonly-used metric but it's closely enough aligned with hyperpalatability that I think the distinction doesn't matter.
Large part of the molecules of my body were created by supernova
Which ones? Aren’t you thinking about atoms instead?
The molecules I’m aware of are all made of atoms.
> Avoiding UPF
> Bread grows on trees, apparently
I was looking for duck fat to roast some potatoes in. The store didn't have it but they did have beef tallow. I gave it a shot. Worked great. I'd get it again
RFK's playbook is to wake up, check what the crunchy moms on instagram are cackling about, issue policy based on the comments sections.
Remove whatever politics you might believe from the equation.
Is beef tallow a better option for a cooking fat? I think it is.
It's probably still better to avoid eating french fries regardless of what they're fried in. That would probably lead to better health outcomes regardless.
Unless you're claiming that it tastes better, then sure, beef tallow is pretty tasty.
Avocado, canola, olive oil would all be way better. Beef tallow is really high in saturated fat
The omega6:3 ratio and PUFA content of tallow is favorable.
Canola and other seed oils are made using toxic solvents which are not full removed from the final product.
> Canola and other seed oils are made using toxic solvents which are not full removed from the final product.
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...
Go look up the studies of actual outcome data when replacing saturated fats with seed oils. Seed oils do much better
Are you sure?
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.
I don't have time to look into the sydney heart study but I know for the minnesota experiment they, not knowing how bad it was at the time, used margarine with high trans fats as the replacements. Also had a huge 95% drop out rate
Actually on a quick check the sydney study looks to be the exact same
Look at a meta review. There are a ton of these studies and the overwhelming evidence is that saturated fat is associated with CVD and ACM, PUFAs are not.
have you seen the amount of antibiotics, hormones and ammonia used in meat production?
Compared to what and for what purpose?
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).
Politics aside, the omega6:3 ratio and PUFA content of tallow is favorable.
Tallow is still higher in long chain SFAs than vegetable saturated fats, which are less healthy than short and medium chain SFAs (but neither is as good as PUFAs).
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".
Omega ratio matters most taking total intake of 3 and 6 into account. Since tallow is overwhelmingly saturated fat, it's a moot point what the ratio is. The remedy to low omega-3 is just to consume more dominant EPA/DHA and even ALA sources. Omega 6 won't fly off the charts except through consuming lots of packaged boxed foods and ultraprocessed foods, which overwhelming use vegetable oils like soybean or sunflower (North American fat consumption has skyrocketed over a century mostly owing to these foods). Even if you consume some nuts or seed oil now and then, just consume fish or a supplement.
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.
Our own health department has completely removed objectivity from their process. It doesn't matter if they say something right or wrong now, they've completely lost our trust.
I don’t particularly trust any claims from previous administrations’ health departments, let alone this one.
Politics aside, the omega6:3 ratio and PUFA content of tallow is favorable.
You've made this comment three times so far.
That changes my perception from "maybe that's a good point" to "spammers should die painfully."
I’m with you, repeating it is like low effort copy pasta when they should’ve put effort into backing up that claim.
Hey! You forgot to mention about its favorable omega 6 to omega 3 ratio. /s
He's almost the perfect example of the colloquial stereotype of "Dunning Kruger Syndrome", which is why he's so dangerous.
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.
He seems to be aware of his lack of knowledge: https://youtu.be/AGq_Q7tVLCU?si=Qcw_cQHoqbBc5dgW
Yet still here we are
I think he's actively lying with this to have some amount of plausible deniability.
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.
> he thinks he knows better than the entire medical establishment
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.
The solution is to fix the medical establishment, not to appoint a person trained by Facebook moms and and natural food blogs.
As an outside observer of this beef tallow trend, it looks to me a lot like a fad driven by some internalized machismo: "It's not proper food if it's not from a dead animal." While this is not unique to the US, apparently believers of this in the US reached a critical mass enough to make it public policy.
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.
The #1 thing to look out for in studies they reference is what's the replacement
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
> relatively obscure cooking medium
I guess I'm old now, because I remember when it was a big deal that McDonald's switched from using tallow.
I listened to Malcom Gladwell talking about how McDonald’s switched from beef tallow, and decided to try the double fry method using tallow for myself.
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.
Beef tallow itself with its triglycerides cannot be healthy.
[dead]
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I guess by far the majority of people on this planet selected:
You can have both and not clog your arteries
Not to be flippant, but we know that the answer to that is "No" because of Betteridge's Law of Headlines[1].
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
If you are deep frying, for e.g. french fries, any cooking oil that is solid at room temperature can keep them from being greasy. This includes beef tallow, but also coconut oil for a vegetable-based oil.
For some foods the being-solid-at-room-temperature property can be important for texture.
I have no disagreement with this and I think I said as much.
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.
Beef tallow has a favorable omega 6 to omega 3 ratio and low levels of PUFAs, compared to seed oils and other cooking fats.
I recommend reading the article.
I won't bother as I'm vegetarian, which means that I really don't care the "supposed" benefits (which likely pale compared to the ingestion of long chain saturated fats present in beef tallow, as opposed to the short and medium chain saturated fats present in coconut oil). Beef tallow is irrelevant to me except for restaurateurs or food manufacturers who use it without disclosing it. (One should disclose its use in any case. For people who avoid pork, knowing that your product contains "beef lard" instead of "whatever lard was cheapest this week" matters, because they can't do "pork lard".)
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.
> For large groups of people it's off limits due to personal dietary restrictions
So you’re proposing that the FDA should promote a vegan diet to cater to the lowest common denominator?
Evidence for the negative effects of omega 6s and specifically seed oils is at best fuzzy and conflicting, plenty of studies have found little to no difference. Research on the subject is as best inconclusive.
> tallow has a favorable omega 6 to omega 3 ratio
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?
There's little evidence surrounding seed oils - https://dynomight.net/seed-oil/
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.