Is it a skincare hack or hack skincare?
Tallow — rendered bovine fat — is hailed as a holy grail moisturizer and cure-all for any condition plaguing the skin. Dermatologists, however, are not so keen on the product.
“I give it a thumbs down from the scientific and dermatologic perspective,” Dr. Zakia Rahman, a clinical professor of dermatology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, told the New York Times. “It could potentially cause acne flares or cause irritation.”
Sascha Green, 28, slathers it on her skin to soothe dry skin, bug bites, rashes and burns.
“I made my own to start, just by getting meat from Costco and stripping the fat off the meat and rendering it,” the Indiana resident told The Times.
Rachel Ogden, 48, swears that tallow makes her skin “nourished,” while Morgan Helm, 24, said she sees a “huge difference” in her complexion after using it.
“Smelling a little beefy,” she told The Times, “might just be the cost of having a glowing face.”
Tallow has taken off on TikTok, where various creators promote it, claiming it is nature’s Botox or a substitute for retinol.
Its popularity on social media has caused business to soar for Mary Heffernan, 46, who makes tallow products on her 1,800-acre ranch in Northern California. She told The Times that, even in a slow month, she sells 2,000 jars of the stuff.
“Thanks to TikTok and social media for really promoting tallow as trendy,” she told The Times. “When we released it on our website, we sold $42,000 in tallow overnight. Sold out.”
However, experts are skeptical of its true benefits.
Rahman explained that a good face cream should consist of more linoleic acid than oleic acid — beef tallow has the opposite.
Dermatologic surgeon Dr. Mary L. Stevenson, who is also an associated professor of dermatology at NYU Langone Health, told The Times she does not recommend tallow to patients.
“There is little data for it, and there are so many alternative options,” she told The Times, adding that it can cause acne.
Board-certified dermatologist Dr. Muneeb Shah previously told The Post that, while it is not necessarily “unsafe,” it wouldn’t be his “first choice.”
“There’s so many great skincare products out there now that are affordable and widely available that it just wouldn’t make sense to me to take a chance on an ingredient that we don’t know works or not,” he said.
