Beef Fat Reduces Barrier Function, Increases Inflammation, and is Loaded With Toxins

Another social media craze is to slather tallow, beef fat, on your face. Some will say, oh, it’s from grass fed animals, so it’s OK. Before I discuss how suboptimal it is to smear beef fat on your face, let’s dispel the notion that grass fed is good. First, because of deregulation in the cattle industry, one has no idea if the slaughtered animal was raised in the USA and actually fed grass. The beef is likely coming from a highly deregulated, often highly corrupt country, where the animal was fed whatever was cheaply available. And that ain’t grass in the field. While the EU has banned all hormones in beef, most countries, including the USA, have not. If you’ve ever tasted 100% grass fed beef, you’ll know that it doesn’t taste very good. Most beef is given a diet of corn and grain and shot-up with hormones and antibiotics to make it fat and tasty. So-called grass fed beef is usually given corn and grains before being slaughtered, and hormones and antibiotics can be given to “grass fed” animals. Before I stopped eating meat, I tasted purely grass fed beef and it was horrible. Rarely is meat purely grass fed and not given hormones and antibiotics. Estrogen is one such hormone- can you say Cancer? Further, of those animals that are fed grasses before they’re given their finishing diet of grains and corn, each pound of grass-fed beef may produce 500 percent more greenhouse gases than grain-fed beef. This alone is a great reason to stop eating or using beef. The industry is unethical, and spends huge sums of money, including on social media, to fool you.

Now for those who are thinking of slathering dead animals on your face – namely the TikTok fashion of the day – smearing beef fat on your face. Once the animal has been killed, tallow is made from the boiled carcasses of slaughtered cows, from which the fatty product is then derived. Basically the producers skim off the fat from the boiled carcass, yielding suet (fat surrounding the visceral organs) and other fatty tissues. That’s what is to be slathered on the face – boiled carcass. Toxins accumulate in the fat of animals. Dioxins are one of many, and they accumulate in the fatty tissues of humans exposed to animal fat. So animal toxins applied to the skin will likely result in dioxins and other toxins and hormones to accumulate in the skin’s hypodermis, as well as in the epidermis and dermis.

People have been asking me are these tallow products on the market good? I always teach my students to ask a fundamental question when asking if something is good. One of the fundamental questions to ask is, Compared to What? Is smearing beef fat on your face better than smearing chlorine on your face. Yes it is. Is smearing beef fat on your skin better than smearing Crisco? Yes and no. Crisco is comedogenic and the people selling beef fat say it’s not comedogenic. I’ll give them the benefit of doubt. But beef fat, because it’s high in oleic acid just like olive oil, has been shown to disrupt the skin barrier and actually cause more irritation versus plant oils that are high in linoleic acid. And some beef fat products also contain olive oil – a double whammy to the skin’s barrier function. Now let’s ask if beef fat is better than using NeoGenesis Barrier Renewal Cream? The clear answer is no. Here’s why. While beef fat disrupts the skin’s barrier, Barrier Renewal Cream (BRC) uses a balance of human skin identical lipids that have been scientifically, clinically, and real world-use proven to restore the skin’s barrier. The lipids used in the BRC include linoleic acid, stearic acid, ceramides, cholesterol, and other free fatty acids known to optimally restore barrier function. Products such as BRC not only restore barrier function and reduce inflammation in the skin, they also reduce inflammation systemically – throughout the body. So please don’t use beef fat fat on your skin. Rather, use a product that is formulated using scientific evidence, finding safe and effective results, leading to better barrier formation and reduced inflammation.