Short answer: No.
Long answer: Absolutely not.
Are people really using beef tallow as moisturizer?
Yes. You may even have seen it already, even if you didn’t quite catch on at the time. Beef tallow is the key ingredient in trending moisturizers being touted across social media.
Yes, beef tallow. In other words, beef fat. Natural beauty brands like Primally Pure and smaller makers on Etsy sell tallow moisturizers. These creams generally contain just a few ingredients: the beef fat, some fragrant essential oils to mask any unduly beefy aromas, and sometimes a botanical extract or two. Once reserved for soap- and candlemaking, tallow is trying to go mainstream.
Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash
WHO is using beef tallow as moisturizer?
The influencers praising beef tallow moisturizers have some things in common. Many use their platforms to promote “natural,” “organic,” “crunchy” lifestyles as the way to health and happiness. They demonize “chemicals” and ingredients that the creators and their followers can’t pronounce.
The carnivore diet figures in too. This trendy fad diet is exactly what it sounds like. Proponents of the carnivore diet exclusively eat meat and animal products. They claim to receive all kinds of health and longevity benefits from eating a diet that is basically the opposite of the diet recommended by every reputable medical body on the face of the planet. As another animal product, tallow moisturizer fits this crowd perfectly.
Beyond these circles, you’ll also see beef tallow moisturizer in the routines of creators who romanticize a “traditional” lifestyle. Influencers in the homesteading, “traditional marriage,” and evangelical Christian spheres love this trend. Viewers imagine that people could have made these creams with exactly the same ingredients hundreds of years ago, when life was (according to their notions) simpler and better.
Is beef tallow a good moisturizer?
Objectively speaking, tallow isn’t the worst moisturizer option you could find. On a very basic level, it does moisturize, thanks to the emollient lipids it’s made out of. So smearing beef fat on your face will soften skin while it’s on. Tallow also contains some vitamins and antioxidants which may confer benefits to skin if applied topically. However, beef tallow contains a high proportion of oleic acid, which dermatologists caution can disrupt the skin barrier and cause irritation. Additionally, the fragrant essential oils used in many of these products irritate many people’s skin.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash
Quality control may also be an issue. Tallow cream makers on Etsy often market their products as handmade in their home kitchens. It’s a charming selling point, to be sure. But product contamination due to improper sanitation, formulation, and packaging protocols feel much less charming.
Now factor in the fact that standard cosmetic preservatives, like parabens, go against the “all natural,” “organic,” “free from chemicals” ethos that drives trends like beef tallow as moisturizer. The risk of contamination increases in the absence of proper full-spectrum preservative systems. Moisturizing with beef fat is all fun and games until you open the jar and get hit with a big whiff of rancid oil.
Should I use beef tallow moisturizer?
Ultimately, you can find an almost infinite variety of moisturizers better for skin than a beef tallow cream. Many offer better balanced formulations that contain hydrating ingredients as well as emollient ones. Many include standardized concentrations of other active ingredients to target specific skin issues (so, for example, a cream that contains 5% vitamin C, as opposed to a tallow cream, which may contain some, but in an unspecified, unknown concentration). Most come preserved and packaged according to industry standards for quality and safety.
If you want to try beef tallow as a face moisturizer, go for it. You may love it! But if you’re on the fence and wondering whether it’s really as great as the wellness and homesteading influencers make it sound, don’t get too deep in the FOMO feels. You’re not missing out.
