Secret skincare ingredient used for thousands of years. From cavemen to Cleopatra - humanity used tallow as the main ingredient in soaps, balms, lipsticks and everything in between.
But what is tallow and why should you use it?
Let’s dive in.
You may have a hard of tallow being used for cooking but why would you ever put it on your skin?
Tallow has many benefits for our skin and has been used as a base for skincare products for literally thousands of years.
What is tallow?
Tallow is a melted animal fat - mostly coming from beef (beef tallow) or sheep (mutton tallow).
Animal fat trimmings are slowly melted and strained to get this golden goodness which can be used in cooking or cosmetics.
History of tallow
Tallow has been used for thousands of years to prepare food, but also in cosmetics.
Early soaps were made in Babylon almost 5000 years ago from beef tallow and ash.
Benefits of tallow for skin
Our ancestors knew exactly why they used each ingredient available to them. Their wisdom is confirmed by modern science and numerous studies.
Tallow shares similar oils with our skin so it’s well absorbed and highly beneficial moisturizer.
1. Essential vitamins
Vitamins A, B12, D, E, and K are a unique mix you can only find in animal products. Tallow has all of them and that helps to nourish our skin. There is no comparable product made from vegetable oils that had the same properties.
2. Moisturizing like crazy
Tallow contains stearic & oleic acids that are also found in the outer layer of our skin. Stearic acid helps to improve skin flexibility and repairs it. Oleic acid helps important nutrients penetrate deep into our skin.
3. Anti-inflammatory
Tallow contains a perfect mix of alpha-linolenic (omega 3) & linoleic acids (omega 6) that have an anti-inflammatory effect on our skin and help with immune response.
This is why tallow magically heals eczema.
4. Smooth & healthy skin
Palmitoleic & Palmitic acid are some of the basic building blocks of our skin.
Palmitic acid helps improve the smoothness of skin while palmitoleic acid is an important skin antimicrobial.
5. Natural anti-ageing
Tallow makes your skin look younger.
Vitamin E in tallow helps to protect the skin from UV light and is a potent antioxidant that also prevents the breakdown of collagen.
6. Protect skin from damage
Vitamin D in tallow induces the expression of antimicrobial peptide genes in our skin. This helps to prevent infections that cause skin damage.
Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) found in grass-fed tallow has anti-cancer properties and is found in studies to have a possibility to prevent or cure breast cancer.
That’s why your tallow should always come from 100% grass-fed pasture-raised animals.
7. You can eat it
Have you ever seen warnings on cosmetics products?
It is because they are toxic for you.
Natural tallow balms are consumable. Not that they taste good nor you should eat them - but a lot of high-quality tallow cosmetics are food grade.
There is abundant evidence that tallow is highly beneficial in cooking, but also cosmetics.
Our ancestors knew this and used tallow abundantly.
But why did we stop using tallow?
Similar to many other natural remedies and ingredients tallow has been widely used until the start of the 20th century.
The rise of modern industry introduced seed oils into our diet which slowly replaced tallow, lard and other natural fats with artificial products like Crisco.
Literal machine lubricants (seed oils or vegetable oils such as canola or sunflower oil) were added to our cosmetics as well as to our food. But this didn’t have anything to do with health benefits. It had everything to do with profit and corporate greed.
Tallow is a natural product and every batch you make will be slightly different.
Its structure, colour, smell & appearance depends on the type of animal it’s coming from but also it’s breed, part of the body where fat is taken from, diet, geographical location and many other things.
That’s why it’s hard to impossible to produce consistently the same batches of tallow to have the same product marketed globally.
It’s much easier and cheaper to do this with chemically produced products like vegetable seed oils.
But times are changing.
More and more people are aware of this scam and want better food and better cosmetics.
If you want to change don’t buy food or cosmetics filled with seed oils and ingredients you can’t even pronounce.
Always look for natural cosmetics with real ingredients. Tallow as the base for balms, soaps and even deodorants is always the sign that you’re getting the highest quality in the product.
If it was good for Cleopatra it’s good for you too!
