Yes, the difference is that tallow is solid at room temperature, so great for preservation. I was planning on making pemmican with it, but slicing, drying, and pulverizing hundreds of tiny strips of meat seemed like a lot of work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemmican

> to create lard. Which is is also delicous for fries.

I'm afraid to ask but regardless: you use the lard as a replacement for oil when frying/cooking fries, or as like a condiment/sauce/something?

And pies

I think the experts and the media are to blame.

The public are presented with things that are weakly evidenced as scientifically proven. After all, the one study that says something is good or bad for you was published in a peer-reviewed journal and the university PR people blogged about it and the newspapers reported it uncritically.

A lot of experts are very bad at differing between different levels of evidence and probability: "my personal (if expert) opinion", "a consensus in the field" and "backed by reasonable evidence" and "proven" are very different but all often get presented the same way.

Lived experience is not really weak evidence though. Personally I use tallow minimally but it seems like a really good high flash point oil.

Fallacy of composition. It does not logically follow that given Palmitic acid is the most abundant SFA in the US diet (objectively true), and given the US diet directly leads to poor health outcomes (very likely but not proven at least not to the level of the prior claim), that Palmitic acid contributes to poor health outcomes. It's entirely possible Palmitic acid is great for you and if we had less we'd be doing even worse. The statements are simply not connected at all.

I used to work across the street from a “New Southern” style eatery, beef tallow biscuits are to die for.

It's great until it cools down and the fat hardens. Then it's gross.

The link between cardiovascular disease and general consumption of animal products (in comparison with diets with reduced or zero animal products) is by now extremely well established I believe. I believe in this case meta-analyses and large studies should be very informative (although understanding root causes is also important). All cause mortality also observed to be reduced, although to a lesser degree.

Just from a cursory search, you can find tons of studies supporting this. It is not a controversial statement at all in scientific nutrition and medical fields.

Some studies:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11537864/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33951994/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-30455-9

I think it's significant however that unhealthy plant based diets show increased mortality, so it's important to pay attention to what you eat in any case.

It's also worth keeping in mind conflicts of interest and cultural aspects. I think probably there are strong interests in the side of animal products, although this is partisan in the US (and surely there is some lobbying from the opposite direction as well). Also I think culturally there's strong preference for animal products, in particular meat and beef consumption, almost everywhere. Of course, science is supposed to be resistant to conflicts of interest (and it is usually mandatory to disclose funding conflicts of interest), but not all studies are the same. Those conflicts being mostly in the other direction give me additional confidence there isn't a strong bias from those sources.

Also I always like to mention you should supplement a plant based diet, with vitamin B12 and usually a few other vitamins.

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Also, for the more literally minded, it's obviously not simply due to the atoms from your food source having come from animals most recently that they're unhealthy, so it's also obviously theoretically possible to produce healthy animal-based foods (if only by transmuting their atoms with nuclear reactions), it's the particular proteins, fats and other compounds typically found tend to interact in unhealthy ways with our system.

But that said it's also very significant (in favor of plants) that animals often suffer a lot in the production of those food products, and whether or not you consume them you have the responsibility to diminish their suffering.

Thanks for clarifying -- looked into it. Turns out tallow is all the worst parts for people with high cholesterol vs plant based oils.

The concern I have with vegetable oil is if you heat it past the smoke point, you end up creating toxic compounds. The saturated fats are most stable.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3t902pqt3C7nGN99hV...

I prefer lard because it's slightly lower in saturated than tallow, and doesn't alter taste so much.

sadly one of the most frustrating things is that everyone groups saturated fats in one big group. there is lots of evidence that only specific types of saturated fats actually cause CVD, in particular some specific configurations of palmitic acid. the other saturated fats are not nearly as problem causing.

Lard is a different mix of the oils from the others. Much less saturated fat than tallow (but still a lot). You can look up the proportions if you want to.

What this matters isn't clear of course.

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The fundamental problem with UPF isn't the nutritional qualities of the food. It's the _process_ itself. UPF is basically derived from A/B testing food continuously to making it (a) highly consumable and (b) low cost. Repeat that process over decades and thousands of times and you get overconsumption of shit food.

Don't worry, they are already salivating at the idea of a tallow renaissance, where they can do a viral marketing blast of "McDonalds Tallow fries"

Sadly, their fries come frozen and "pre-fried" in soybean oil, or at least that was being reported by the health nutters at the time of the announcement.

They've also added MSG to the Colonel's original herbs and spices. I haven't been there in at least 15 years.

I think it has more to do with disliking the mouth feel/texture of fat and gristle than because we are so rich. But by all means feel free to gnaw away at that bone in the ribeye for the calcium if you're so worried about getting 100% of the all possible nutrition from a ribeye steak.

There are 342 million Americans. Don't try to treat them all as a unified group. There are Americans who cut the fat, there are Americans who eat it.

What has changed is we have learned that fat isn't as bad as it was made out to be - it doesn't seem to have as large an effect on health as thought 40 years ago. That doesn't mean it is healthy - though some take it that way.

It was once observed that vegetarians being healthier than others could be explained almost entirely by vegetarians being less likely to smoke - something studies generally didn't even try to control for and so we don't know if that observation is true. There could be some other unknown factor in play as well that because it is unknown we can't control for it.

Seems like Americans are into making up food theories instead of just eating with common sense and moving your body with legs instead of cars sometimes.

Looking at dry pasta from Europe and the US, they seem pretty much the same, except the US pasta is more likely to use enriched flour; not sure what makes that less healthy.

Bread varies a lot and yeah we have some terrible breads, I don't buy them but someone must because they keep selling them

Gender studies as a field is absolutely riddled with gender bias. I view it with scepticism because I don't think it will treat my gender or my sex fairly, not because I think there's no need for it.

The "X for MEN" trend, for example, exists in the context of decades of "X for WOMEN" products. The Man Shake (TM) is a product that only exists because Slimfast (TM) has already convinced the world that meal replacement shakes are for women.

I can see why The Man Shake is stupid, but I don't understand how Slimfast was any better. Nor do I understand why The Man Shake is masculinisation but Slimfast isn't feminisation. Nor why one should be seen as exploitative advertising targeting insecurities, while the other is an intentional political effort.

A lot of guys are very insecure because they’re overweight and sedentary and have a desk job (instead of working manual labor). And since the US is all about making your consumption your identity, the “x is masculine” marketing is like shooting fish in barrel.

It's probably still better to avoid eating french fries regardless of what they're fried in. That would probably lead to better health outcomes regardless.

Unless you're claiming that it tastes better, then sure, beef tallow is pretty tasty.

Avocado, canola, olive oil would all be way better. Beef tallow is really high in saturated fat

> Is beef tallow a better option for a cooking fat? I think it is.

Better compared to what? Better than refined canola? Probably. Better than good quality, cold-pressed vegetable oils? Probably not. It's not great for heart health.

How is “I think it is” a more valuable contribution than what the parent said?

Compared to what and for what purpose?

Olive oil? Peanut oil? No and (mostly) no.

Compared to hydrogenated margarine that was pushed a couple of decades ago before we learned about trans-fats? Of course.

If you use it when cooking for guests, you should disclose that you're using it (especially for non-meat dishes) because it may add extra fat that they're not OK with or consider inappropriate for personal dietary consumption (they're vegetarian, don't eat beef products, whatever).

I have a friend for whom we can't use anything that has sunflower oil in it, which is _really hard to avoid_ in surprising ways (there are spice blends that I use which have a bit of sunflower oil in the mixes).

Our own health department has completely removed objectivity from their process. It doesn't matter if they say something right or wrong now, they've completely lost our trust.

Hey! You forgot to mention about its favorable omega 6 to omega 3 ratio. /s

> he thinks he knows better than the entire medical establishment

I think you have missed the part about why we are in this situation.

People are absolutely fed up with the medical establishment. There is no way to twist this.

He seems to be aware of his lack of knowledge: https://youtu.be/AGq_Q7tVLCU?si=Qcw_cQHoqbBc5dgW

Yet still here we are

I have no disagreement with this and I think I said as much.

But the premise of the original article (that beef tallow ever went away, which is required for a comeback) is deeply flawed, and the fascionable junk science from RFK is the dumbest possible reason to use beef tallow.

Just don't expect me (a vegetarian) to eat anything that has beef tallow, and expect me to be very pissed off if I later learn a restaurant or food manufacturer uses beef tallow without disclosing it, because that's taking choice away from me.

Evidence for the negative effects of omega 6s and specifically seed oils is at best fuzzy and conflicting, plenty of studies have found little to no difference. Research on the subject is as best inconclusive.

> tallow has a favorable omega 6 to omega 3 ratio

Source for Americans needing more omega-6-fatty-acid intake?

> seed oils

Do we have evidence around seed oils? Or is this the new homeopathy?

I won't bother as I'm vegetarian, which means that I really don't care the "supposed" benefits (which likely pale compared to the ingestion of long chain saturated fats present in beef tallow, as opposed to the short and medium chain saturated fats present in coconut oil). Beef tallow is irrelevant to me except for restaurateurs or food manufacturers who use it without disclosing it. (One should disclose its use in any case. For people who avoid pork, knowing that your product contains "beef lard" instead of "whatever lard was cheapest this week" matters, because they can't do "pork lard".)

But the reality is that there's insufficient science for the promotion of beef tallow in RFK's health treason. For large groups of people it's off limits due to personal dietary restrictions (religious or animal product avoidance) and would be contraindicated for anyone who currently has cardiovascular diseases involving high cholesterol.

Use beef tallow, don't use beef tallow. I don't care unless I'm possibly eating food that you have prepared or manufactured (because I don't want rendered animal fats in my food). But don't pretend that it's a health food. It isn't, but can still be eaten in moderation by anyone who _doesn't_ mind beef products in their food.

Right. They used solid blocks in the 1990s, but it was vegetable oil not beef tallow. Of course to make vegetable oil a solid block they had to make it a trans-far which is worse than saturated fat (as we now know, but didn't then). In the late 1990s they switched to a liquid oil, though I don't know how what it was (I suspect it still had a lot of trans fats, but I don't have information on the composition). I quit just after that, but I think they switched the fat used again in the early 2000s to something that was pure vegetable oil.