Will dermatologists have a beef about this TikTok skincare trend? Influencers on the social media platform have been pushing beef tallow as a facial moisturizer and a way of healing your skin and reducing acne. This includes telling you that smearing such animal fat on your face is going to make it look more “glowy” as @superglowingg states in her TikTok post here:
The claim is that beef tallow consists of oils that are similar to the oils normally secreted by your skin and can help your skin retain moisture. TikTokers also assert that beef tallow contains skin nourishing ingredients that have anti-inflammatory properties. And, naturally, they’ve also used the whole natural argument that is often used to push products—that beef tallow is something natural from cows rather than a synthesized substance and, thus, safe to use. Of course, saying something is “natural” doesn’t necessarily mean that it is good for you—which is why you don’t typically smear natural things like dirt, horse feces, toe fungus or uranium on your face.
What Is Beef Tallow?
Before we dive into whether these good-for-you-moisturizer claims about beef tallow hold any water, let’s get into the meat of what beef tallow is. Another name for beef tallow is “rendered” fat. Tallow, in general, is the fatty tissue that surrounds a ruminant animal’s organs that’s then been removed, heated and clarified. In this case, the term ruminant animals doesn’t refer to animals who keep thinking about something over and over again but instead are those who chew their cud like cows, buffaloes, sheep, goats and deer. Beef tallow comes specifically from cows and is also known as “beef drippings.”
Tallow is typically whiteish and solid at room temperature. It is somewhat similar to lard. But lard comes from pigs and tends to have a softer texture.
Beef tallow has been long used to fry or cook things under high-heat, such as when you deep fry French fries. It does contain good stuff like conjugated linoleic acid and vitamins K2 and E, but is also high in saturated fats. So, smearing beef tallow on your face could make your face more tasty, which could please others who happen to kiss or lick your face. But, again, the real topical question is whether topical application of beef tallow can actually improve your skin?
Here Are Some Questions About Beef Tallow
Well, lots of different oily substances could help your skin retain moisture and make it look all “glowy,” at least temporarily. For example, smearing your face with butter could do the trick. But there’s a reason why you don’t regularly treat your face like a bagel. Many oily substances can be comedogenic, which is a rather funny sounding medical term that means clogging up your pores. And clogging up the pores in your skin could, guess what, worsen your acne.
The other concern with smearing just any oily substance on your face revolves around a potential rotisserie chicken-esque problems. Once you go out into the sun, various oils can intensify the effects of ultraviolet rays on your skin, sort of like cooking your skin further. Over time, this can lead to premature aging of your skin and raise your risk of skin cancer. And as I have detailed before for Forbes, TikTokers and TikTok posts aren’t always mindful of the harmful effects of UV radiation.
There Have Been Limited Scientific Studies About Beef Tallow As A Skin Product
The problem is there haven’t been enough published studies to determine how beneficial smearing beef tallow may or may not be for your skin and what the risks may be. If you are curious about what studies are out there, take a look at the scoping review published in May 2024 in the journal Cureus entitled “Tallow, Rendered Animal Fat, and Its Biocompatibility With Skin: A Scoping Review.” The appearance of beef tallow as an ingredient in some cosmetics products motivated the authors to search for and review of the available scientific studies looking at the efficacy and safety of topical beef tallow for skin care, which yielded 19 studies that fit their screening criteria.
Their conclusion? “More research is still needed.” They found that the available studies provided limited and often discrepant results regarding the safety of topical tallow as a cosmetic product in humans. So, surprise, surprise, it looks like beef tallow hasn’t been well studied as a skincare product.
Plus, even though beef tallow may be an ingredient in some cosmetic products doesn’t mean that using larger amounts of pure beef tallow on your face is going to be OK.
Therefore, put beef tallow in the not-so-sure-yet-if-this-is-good-for-your-skin category and also the here-we-go-again-with-claims-about-a-product-being-made-without-scientific-evidence category. Remember celebrities or social media influencers claiming that something works and is safe is not the same as real scientific evidence. In fact, who knows how much they are even using the product they are pushing and what else they may be doing. For now, it’s better to rely on scientifically supported products instead for skin moisturization and protection. Don’t be surprised if the social media claims about beef tallow don’t quite “meat” your expectations.
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