Beef tallow and brain health

Everywhere I turn, someone seems to be talking about beef tallow. This includes Jacob Peters, founder of healthtech darling, Superpower, who created a LinkedIn video of him bringing beef tallow to a restaurant and insisting that the they cook with it. I like those guys but that post was wrong on many levels.

Beef tallow is made from the drippings around beef and is exactly what many grandparents used to make gravy from the roast beef. Don’t get me wrong, I think beef drippings are delicious, but they really are not good for you at least not more than 1X/week.

Beef tallow is high in saturated fat. It might be the one thing that hasn’t changed in terms of health recommendations.

From an article by the Cleveland Clinic:

”A diet that’s high in saturated fat increases your risk of coronary heart disease (CAD), the most common type of heart disease, says Dodd. CAD occurs when gunk builds up on your artery walls and restricts blood flow.

CAD is often known as a “silent killer,” given how it can develop undetected before revealing itself with a heart attack.

“Saturated fats promote the sort of artery clogs that can lead to these problems,” she adds.

The American Heart Association advises limiting saturated fat to only 6% of your daily caloric intake. To put that in perspective, a tablespoon of beef tallow is almost the FULL daily amount of saturated fat recommended within a 2,000-calorie diet.

“Beef tallow is just not a healthy choice for cooking,” emphasizes Dodd. (She suggests using plant-based liquid cooking oils such as avocado oil or extra virgin olive oil. Try to avoid coconut oil, which shares many of the same health concerns as beef tallow.)”

What about red meat and the brain?

In a prospective study of 133,771 participants, higher intake of red meat, particularly processed red meat, resulted in a 13% greater risk of dementia and 16% worse subjective cognitive functioning. Replacing 1 serving per day of nuts and legumes for processed red meat was associated with a 19% lower risk of dementia and 1.37 fewer years of cognitive aging.

Mouse studies that longevity researchers conduct often use mice on a high fat diet as a model of how to create ill health.

I searched Pubmed to make sure I wasn’t missing anything that was published that would shed new light on this issue. I found no scientific articles to back up the beef tallow craze.

Olive oil, on the other hand, consistently comes out on top for brain health, heart health, and longevity in general. Mediterranean diet, which has countless studies behind it and is practiced in many blue zones, consists heavily of plants, seafood, and olive oil.

What if you want to fry things like french fries at high heat? Olive oil isn’t good for frying at high temperature.

Here’s the rub, french fries aren’t good for you and neither is anything else that’s deep fried. I would suggest simply not eating them.

I’m not perfect, I definitely eat french fries on occasion. But I know they aren’t good for me no matter what they are deep fried in.

What about the people spreading beef tallow on their faces? Many dermatologists are saying this is making people’s skin more acne prone.

““Tallow is highly comedogenic and pore-clogging, so it will likely cause acne despite claims that it won't,” says Maya Thosani, MD, a double board-certified dermatologist. Dr. Shamban agrees, adding that on a comedogenicity scale from one to five, beef tallow is considered to be a two or a three, meaning up to 50 percent of people will experience contributing acnegenic conditions from it”