What Is Beef Tallow and Why Is It in the News?

This old-school cooking fat is having a moment. But is it healthy? Here’s what the evidence shows

Michelle Crouch,

AARP

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Published January 30, 2026

A measuring cup of white beef tallow, a traditional cooking fat, shown next to its product packaging

The Washington Post via Getty Images

Decades ago, beef tallow was phased out of American kitchens because doctors were worried about the heart risks of saturated fat. Now, the old-school cooking fat seems to be back.

Whole Foods named beef tallow a top food trend for 2026, and celebrities and influencers are touting it on social media. Most notably, the newest federal dietary guidelines promote beef tallow, along with olive oil and butter, as a “healthy fat.”

Beef tallow’s comeback has alarmed many doctors and nutrition scientists, who warn that it is packed with saturated fats known to clog arteries. They say promoting beef tallow clashes with decades of research into heart health. Eating more saturated fat could be especially harmful for those already at higher risk of heart disease and stroke, such as many older adults, they add.

The scientific justification for labeling butter and beef tallow as healthy fats is not clear, says Alice Lichtenstein, a professor at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition.

“Where is this coming from?” she says. “Without seeing any evidence, it’s just very hard to recommend something like beef tallow.”

What is beef tallow?

Beef tallow is a white, shelf-stable cooking fat made by rendering, or melting, the fatty tissue that surrounds the organs of cows. (Lard is the pig equivalent.) Like other saturated fats, beef tallow is solid at room temperature and has a high smoke point.

Beef tallow was used for centuries for baking and frying, often as the secret ingredient that made biscuits and pastries extra flaky. Beef tallow was also the force behind the original McDonald’s french fries, famous for their perfectly crisp edges and soft interior.

However, beef tallow fell out of favor — and was replaced with a vegetable oil blend at McDonald’s in 1990 — as overwhelming evidence emerged that linked saturated fat to heart disease.

Will beef tallow raise your risk of heart problems?

Stand-alone studies on beef tallow can be hard to find, but the existing research consistently puts it near the bottom of the list when it comes to heart health. One large-scale meta-analysis that ranked different types of fats and oils found that while tallow is “less bad” than butter, it’s still much worse for your cholesterol than plant oils like sunflower or canola oil.

In addition, scientists have been studying beef tallow’s main ingredient — saturated fat — since the 1950s, says Christopher Gardner, director of nutrition studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center.

Back then, tightly controlled feeding studies of prisoners showed repeatedly that when they ate more saturated fat, their LDL (“bad”) cholesterol went up, raising their risk of heart disease, he says.

In the decades since, Gardner says, dozens of epidemiological studies have confirmed that link. The data consistently show that swapping saturated fats like beef tallow for unsaturated, plant-based fats like canola, olive and sunflower oil not only improves cholesterol levels but significantly cuts your risk of heart disease and stroke.

“There’s almost more science on this than anything else,” says Gardner, a member of the original committee tasked with helping the government develop the 2025 nutrition guidelines.

One recent study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine in March 2025, followed more than 220,000 adults for 33 years and found that those with the highest intake of plant-based oils had a lower risk of dying. The researchers said that replacing just one tablespoon of butter each day with a plant-based oil could slash your risk of an early death by 17 percent.

Flaws in fat studies

Lately, some health advocates have begun questioning the consensus on saturated fat and its impact on heart health. They say saturated fats like beef tallow are a better option than processed plant-based oils, or seed oils, which they claim cause inflammation. (See: Are Seed Oils Bad for You?)

However, researchers like Gardner and Lichtenstein say there is no evidence suggesting we should avoid seed oils, and plenty of evidence that saturated fat is harmful.

“There’s decades of evidence saying, ‘Don’t choose beef tallow,’ ” Gardner says. “Most of us health professionals are doing a hand plant on our foreheads, thinking, Where did this come from?’ Show me the science that this is better.”

The American Heart Association also maintains that seed oils are a healthy choice and that limiting saturated fat is essential for heart health.

Some of the confusion may stem from several recent observational studies that found no clear link between saturated fat and heart disease, particularly in people without any risk factors, Lichtenstein and Gardner say. However, those papers missed an important detail, they say: what people are eating instead.

When people swap butter or beef tallow for processed foods packed with refined carbs and sugar, there isn’t much benefit, Lichtenstein explains. But when they replace it with plant-based, unsaturated fats, the data overwhelmingly show better health outcomes.

1 tbsp of tallow = 6 grams of saturated fat

Despite endorsing butter, beef tallow and red meat – all major sources of saturated fat – the new federal dietary guidelines kept a previous recommendation limiting saturated fat to less than 10 percent of your total daily calories.

For a 2,000-calorie diet, that means you should consume no more than 20 grams of saturated fat a day.

Nutrition experts say it would be very hard, if not impossible, to regularly cook with beef tallow and follow the other advice in the guidelines – like eating full-fat dairy and red meat – and still stay under that limit. After all, just one tablespoon of beef tallow has 6 grams of saturated fat, almost a third of the daily limit.

That said, Gardner and Lichtenstein emphasize that what matters most for overall health isn’t the type of fat you cook with but what you’re cooking in it. Their advice? Avoid highly processed foods and aim for a Mediterranean-style diet with plenty of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and whole grains.

So if you want to use a little beef tallow to sauté your vegetables in occasionally because it makes you more likely to eat them, Gardner says, he’s not opposed. But, he adds, olive oil would be an even better choice.

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Michelle Crouch is a North Carolina-based writer who has covered health issues for Reader’s Digest, The Washington Post and other publications. She has written for the Bulletin for more than a decade.