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IIt’s one day of the week for one month of the year, which means TikTok has come up with yet another strange piece of health advice. This time, Well+Good editors saw TikTok users touting beef tallow in skincare as a miracle solution to all your skincare woes – and like all TikTok trends that came before it, it deserves a skeptical eye and the analysis of a (qualified) expert .
First, what is beef tallow and where does it come from?
“Beef fat is made fat,” says Lauren Plocha board-certified dermatologist Georgia Dermatology and Skin Cancer Center in Augusta, Georgia, and op Southern and Georgian dermatology in Aiken, South Carolina. “It is rich in lipids, but does not provide protein or carbohydrates.” Tallow can come from any ruminant animal (herbivorous mammals whose name comes from their form of digestion called rumination), including sheep, bison, buffalo, goats, sheep, and even giraffes. Here we will talk specifically about tallow derived from livestock.
Experts in this article
- Lauren Ploch, MD, MEd, FAAD She is certified by the American Board of Dermatology. She is an active member of the American Academy of Dermatology and a member of their Media Expert Team.
Humans have been reusing sebum for thousands of years: the first dipped candles were made in ancient Rome using tallow, and would later be the same used in soaps during the Middle Ages. As amazing as these advances in humanity have been, those of us in 2024 have something that neither of these civilizations possessed: options. Tallow may have served as a great hand cream or lip balm 500 years ago, but we have access to (literally) tens of thousands of products and, more importantly, expert research to help us choose the right products to meet our individual goals. and needs.
Wait, how does beef tallow relate to skin care?
Good question, hypothetical reader! In short… it probably shouldn’t be, but Tallow has recently amassed a dedicated fanbase on social media who see it as a sort of “wellness superstar” ingredient, promoting its use in cooking (totally fine!), supplements (meh), and skin care products (yikes).
A quick look at TikToks about beef tallow in skin care or the hashtag #beefallowskincare on Instagram (used on 5,000 posts and counting) will show you a mountain of influencers singing the praises of beef tallow to tackle everything from acne and dullness to dryness and fine lines. (These can be easily found on both TikTok and Instagram, but I won’t link specific posts here due to the potential for spreading misinformation.) These users often hold up products or point viewers to retailers that include beef tallow in their formulas, sometimes in addition to sponsorship announcements to indicate the poster’s partnerships with the featured brand, or calls to purchase their affiliate links to the products.
Unfortunately, you are much less likely to see qualified dermatological experts promoting these products. Why? Well, all the board-certified derms are too busy trying to help people recover from using beef tallow in their skin care routines.
Is beef fat good for your skin? Should I use it?
When contacted for her expertise on this topic, Dr. Ploof me that she had seen several skin problems causes by beef tallow in her clinical practice, many of whom discovered the ingredient through social media.
“I’ve had several people suffer from acne after using beef tallow,” says Dr. Ploch, adding that she wouldn’t recommend it for acne-prone skin and that she personally doesn’t use it at all. So why do people use it in the first place? “People are always looking for natural moisturizers, but our skin lipids do not have the same composition as the lipids in beef fat,” says Dr. Ploch. “Our skin lipids are ceramides, cholesterol and free fatty acids; tallow consists of fatty acids.”
Most creams, says Dr. Ploch, combine ingredients into formulas that hydrate your skin in different ways. Some moisturizers (for example, hyaluronic acid) are humectants that draw and hold moisturizer into the skin, while others (such as ceramide lipids) hydrate your skin as emollients. “Other moisturizers, such as dimethicone and petroleum jelly, can create an occlusive barrier to prevent moisture from leaving the skin,” she explains. Although sebum may have soothing and occlusive properties, she warns that it can clog pores and is not suitable for those with acne-prone skin.
For those who are unsure or are currently using beef tallow to treat their acne, Dr. Ploch’s to immediately discontinue use. Instead, she suggests turning to a gentle cleanser, mild chemical exfoliants, and a moisturizer formulated with the “right composition of lipids for our natural skin (ceramides, cholesterol, and free fatty acids).”
Besides, if your curiosity about sebum in skin care stems from a desire to pursue more environmentally friendly and sustainable beauty practices, you may be disappointed on that front as well. Journalist Jessica Scott Reid bee Sensitive carefully examined the claims of influencers and marketers promoting talc as ethical. “This tactic can be traced back to the meat industry,” Scott-Reid writes; it’s a philosophy that ignores the “substantial processing” that all animal products must undergo to become useful, just like any other skin care ingredient. As is the case with many products guilty of greenwashing, moral-sounding adjectives are often splashed across the labels of beef fat products:environmentally friendly, ethically producedet al largely uncontrolled.
“I don’t think people realize that most of our skin care products come from natural sources,” says Dr. Ploch, “but those natural sources are purified and distilled into their active ingredients, after which those active ingredients are carefully measured into safe ingredients. amounts to mix into skin care products.”
What to take From beef fat TikTok
If you stay on TikTok long enough – or for any length of time, really – you’ll notice how many “experts” there are floating around the platform. Mental health experts without psychology degrees or counseling accreditations, fitness experts with no experience in sports medicine or personal training, relationship experts whose only qualifications include their own dating history…you get the idea. Sometimes that’s funny (Castor oil belly button pullingeveryone?). It also speaks to the larger problem of most people’s lack of access to qualified medical professionals.
This doesn’t mean all TikTok reviews and recommendations are unfounded or dangerous. The platform can be an excellent resource for finding community and combating isolation, discovering tried-and-true budget advice from people who have found themselves in various financial constraints, or unearthing unique gift ideas. Yet influencers who claim to have authoritative knowledge and expertise on health-related topics can inadvertently harm their audiences. For example, a little due diligence and caution can save you from taking advice on chemical peeling from someone with next to zero dermatological knowledge, whose only part in the game may be their association with peel sponsors.
“We have so many safe, proven ingredients in skin care products,” says Dr. Ploch. “There is no reason to experiment with our most important organ: our skin.” The lesson: If you want or need to get skin care advice from the Internet, do so board-certified individuals who wouldn’t tell you to put rendered beef fat on your acne. Your skin will thank you. Derms will thank you. Even the cows will probably thank you.