The Truth About Beef Tallow: The Marketing Lie Hiding in Plain Sight

0:03Darin Olien:Welcome to Super Life with me, Darin Olien, a podcast where we explore, discover, and share solutions that promote a healthier life and a better world. Together, we'll ignite possibilities, inspire change, and build sovereignty, creating a roadmap towards a super life for you and for all. Get ready to start living your super life.

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4:15This is Darren O 'Lean and this is the Super Life Podcast because we all deserve to kick some ass and have the best life possible. Today, I'm going to peel back the layers on beef tallow. I know I don't like to have to talk about this, but when I see the market going crazy, putting beef tallow on everything and then on your skincare and in your food, I'm like, oh my God, I have to investigate. So this is a bit of my vice episode on freaking beef tallow. Of course, I'm slanted. I have biases. So let me just say that. I've been plant-based for 17 years. I also have been using jojoba oil, shea butter, coconut oil.

5:04And when you really dig into it, we're going to find out some things about beef tallow. From how it's made to actually what it does in the body and on your skin to the system that powers the whole thing. We're also going to tackle the myth that tallow is somehow nutritionally superior to seed oils. Spoiler, the science doesn't back it up. Now I'm going to leave GMOs to the side. Just going to talk about seed oils and tallow, but that's just a part of this discussion. So what tallow really is. Tallow is rendered fat from animal byproducts, trimmings, tissue, remains. And it gets pretty gnarly when it's tallow and oils that are ingested in the body for that process.

5:57It's a little cleaner. And then when it's not, when it's cosmetic or whatever else they're going to use it for, it's not so clean. And that's where they get around a lot of things as well. And now remember, what you put on your body ultimately goes in. The industrial rendering collects these fats, and it grinds it, it heats it to 240 degrees Fahrenheit for at least 30 minutes. Then it presses, it centrifuses, it filters, it bleaches, it deodorizes, and then it refines them. Some goes into edible tallow bins and cauldrons and others go into for biodiesel soap pet food other forms of fats that is external use or whatever we're going to dig into the manufacturing because you know listen I come from kind of a manufacturing process background in the superfood hunting that I did for 15 years, one of the biggest things was just because we found a plant that was incredible in the wild doesn't mean that those constituents made it through the processing.

7:17So we had to go into factories. I've been into thousands of factories all over the world. Well, probably hundreds, right? So that's my dramatic side. But truly hundreds of factories around the world. So So I have a pretty deep understanding of what it takes to process something into a usable. And at the end of the day, what is it now actually when it's actually then processed? And often that is a completely different world. So we can talk about tallow in a vacuum, right? It's built on the foundation really at scale when you're seeing it in these products. on the foundation of factory farming. Cows are confined in feedlots, feeding grains that they're not supposed to be eating, and they weren't evolved to eat.

8:10Massive inputs of water, land, fertilizer, pesticides, GMO, corn, soy, wheat, PFAS in the waterways. It's just a horrible situation, as you know, but it's easy to forget. Yet my tallow in this little container doesn't come from that. Well, sorry to say that it does. And of course, the pollution around these factory farming operations, these feedlots, the air, the water, the health of our planet, the health of the workers, slaughterhouse workers face extremely hazardous environmental psychological stress and high injury rates. So I just want to say that because you're voting with your dollars to purchase things.

9:04And is that in alignment with who you are, what you want this world to be? When you're looking at these things, is that tallow so superior over an extracted coconut oil? Yes, there are issues to every process. There are issues to scaling many, many things. I'm not into delusions saying coconut oil is superior or jojoba oil or shea butter. They are infinitely, though, because I've seen some of those processes, infinitely better than animals slaughtered, environmental pollutions, workers being under just extreme conditions. So I just want to say, yes, nothing's perfect, but some things are really not so great and extremely detrimental.

9:54This is the context. These are all byproducts. Tallow is a byproduct. So when you're thinking of when people market to you, it's ancestral. It's just a marketing term that means nothing other than just manipulating you to have some sort of insecurity of like, oh my God, my skin has some wrinkles. So therefore, I need tallow because they're telling me that it's so superior. Well, you're going to find out in this episode it's not. Spoiler alert. But I was coming into this going, show me. Show me if this is superior. Let's go. Let's go. I have dealt with this my entire career. Someone marketing a product and then it's not only neutered in a product, it's sometimes not even there or insignificant.

10:52I've been fighting this my entire career. I've found incredible superfoods. I helped formulate and was the chief commander of ethics around Shakeology and doing it right. And we've had 5 ,000 tests per batch because of the incredible work at the company that followed what Isabel and I did. So I understand this a lot. So let's break down the myth. Tallow, they say, is nutritionally better than seed oils. It's repeated a lot over and over and over and over again. Many people have debunked this already in the nutrition science. Here's what the research shows. Fat types matter. Tallow is predominantly saturated fat, especially palmitic and steric acids.

11:48Seed oils, sunflower, safflower, canola, flax, chia even, are rich in polyunsaturated fats like omega-6 and 3. These are essential. Our bodies can't make them, and they're beneficial in moderate amounts. And of course, you know that the new discovery on Fatty15, this special form of fat, essential fat that was now discovered, and I love that product. So check out Fatty15, but that's not what this is about. There are certain essential fats that are beneficial to us. The strongest clinical trials and meta-analyses show that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat lowers rates of cardiovascular disease, the things that are mostly killing us as humans.

12:43For example, a seminal AHA and ACC review replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat produced 30 % reduction in cardiovascular risk disease. Seed oils often bring other things like antioxidants, minor phytonutrients, tocopherols, etc. They survive into the oil. The research shows in some of the data that talos processing tends to strip out most of it, degrading all of these so-called claims to be virtually non-existent. Talos claims of being loaded with vitamins are so exaggerated, it's almost laughable, which leads me to doing this investigative solo episode. They measured levels in lab tests are often trace amounts that hold no real nutritional meaningful amounts.

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14:55Darin Olien:Remember, 10 tablets cost you just a dollar a day and you and your health are absolutely worth it. That's energybits.com. My promo code for 20 % off is SUPERLIFE. In short, we look at efficacy per calorie and health outcomes. Seed oils, in moderation, outperform tallow full stop. Tallow is a saturated fat. It is not a vitamin-laden superfood. That is not true. So, moving on to safety. Rendering high heat and holds for a period of time is a kill step for most bacteria and viruses. So, of course, they do have a kill step. 240 degrees Fahrenheit, holding for about 30 minutes, the research shows, and it kills bacteria and viruses.

15:52Great. What they don't account for or what they are starting to be aware of because the industry is getting more and more out of hand is the prions. What are those? Those are misfolded proteins that cause brain diseases like mad cow disease are essentially resistant to any type of rendering. There's no kill step for this. That's why they're trying to get tighter and tighter regulations and ban spinal and brain and nervous tissue into this cauldron of just animal slop. Right? Because that's primarily where these misfolded proteins are. So that's where these misfolded proteins really can cause some damage.

16:47They are dangerous for us. So there are safety quality standards that they have set. Now that doesn't mean people are following those. There's moisture insolubilities. There's free fatty acid. There's oxidation tests. There's color tests. There's contamination tests like dioxins and PCBs. The fatty fraction is about lipophilic contamination collection because keep in mind, fat is a collector of contaminants. It keeps it away from the organ tissues that can cause some real damage. So fatty tissue in animals and in humans is a collector of toxins. So even if it passes those tests, if they're even doing all of those tests, which are very expensive, doesn't make it ideal.

17:38It makes it acceptable under industrial regulations, not mom and pop doing it in a Amish farmhouse. So this is the danger here. The claims are it mimics skin oil, ancestral moisturizer, cleansing balm ingredient, all of these things. There's so many more. The reality is it is occlusive, so it can block water loss. It's a saturated fat. And many other oils do that too, right? The squalene, jojoba oil, olive oil, coconut oil, they all do that. No robust, randomized control trials confirm tallow is superior or moisturizing or anti-aging or a barrier repair versus clinical formulation. This doesn't exist.

18:36Now, again, common sense. If you haven't taken care of your skin and then you're starting to take care of it because you bought this expensive tallow formulation and now you're being consistent, Your skin may just respond because you've done nothing with it. So there's that, right? But the risks are they're pore clogging, right? Especially acne prone and sensitive skins. So that's a lot of people. The rancidity over time is not stabilized properly. The odor and residual contaminations is a big issue. dependency on supply chains starting from industrial meat systems. It's just a horrible system to be a part of.

19:24So you're choosing a narrative, not proven efficacy. So again, the beef system is a big, big system. Subsidized, lobbying efforts, all of that stuff. So think about it. If we have a side to the business that's being thrown away, we can monetize it. so let's monetize it. So then the narrative starts getting pushed. The extraction and more profit, not regeneration or care. Every drop of fat is monetized now, everything. They try to monetize all of the side things that should be thrown away. Nothing is allowed to be waste. I get it. Under normal circumstances, if you are someone that's killing your own animals and using the whole thing, yeah that's a process but that's not the ones being sold or at least at scale.

20:18Brands selling tallow as natural or holistic are often leveraging cheap by-product overhead. So the true costs are plain and simple. The environmental destruction, suffering because the animals are, pollution at massive scales, you're not shown that price tag. We all deserve better. Why I'm doing this? Because we deserve transparency. We deserve integrity. We deserve to repair systems and make better options. So I'm not here to say if you want to eat animal-based products, That's your sovereign choice. That is your integrity of whatever you want to do with your life and your family, etc. All I'm trying to do here is raise the alarm of a massive, polluting agricultural system that is just exploiting another form of profit to you without backing it up in science or anything superior.

21:27Tallow is not nutritionally superior. To seed oils, number one, the trials, the meta-analyses favor polyunsaturated fats, oversaturated fats. Natural does not mean harmless. The system behind tallow is deeply entangled in massive exploitation of animals, the workers, and the environment. Choosing wisely means choosing transparent brands or alternatives with aligned values. Now, if you know people that are doing the tallow and doing it in that way, and they are open and transparent to their process, and there's a small amount of those companies doing it, then go do your thing. But don't, upon face value, just because of words and marketing manipulation, take that as face value.

22:21That is not a good idea. If I did that with all of the hundreds of plant adaptogens, medicinal mushrooms, super fruits that I have scoured this planet. If I took that at face value, I would not have created any products because it would have been a lie. I went around the world looking for superfoods, not just looking for superfoods, but making sure that what was in those foods was actually then in the product because it took me putting eyeballs on it and then getting backed by companies to do it the right way. And if you don't know, you don't know. And we just want to lead a blind eye with this stuff.

23:10And it shouldn't be the way it is. The more we do that, the more we feed a horrible system. This tallow episode is just a muse also of failing systems that ultimately are failing us. The super life perspective is not about shaming anyone. It's not about shaming you. We've been told stories, in this case, farm fresh, grass fed, ancestral living, all this stuff. And it makes us feel connected to nature, even when we're miles away and you have no idea how that product actually got there. But super life isn't about guilt. It's about truth. It's about sovereignty. It's about an awakening. Seeing how the world actually works then gives us the ability to make changes.

24:01So if you're listening to this episode, it may be a little shocking. Like, wow, I never thought about that. And it's true. Most products, if you follow the line of chain of custody of how the hell that one ingredient got into your product or multiple ingredients, it's quite shocking. I don't want to live in that world because I know there's far too many people that have worshipped the God of profit over the health and safety of you and me and our children and our environment and our animals and our pets. Life is too freaking precious for us to just put our heads down and just, I don't want to be bothered.

24:46This doesn't have to bother you. You can easily make another choice and not be a victim of just marketing scams. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to be aware. Awareness creates options. If you're using Tala right now, that's okay. Just know the full picture. Know what you're supporting. And maybe next time, reach for something cleaner, better, more sustainable, better for you, better for the planet. something that supports life, not the destruction of it. There's cold-pressed plant oils, regenerative skincare, cruelty-free brands, or even making your own simple balms and olive oil with beeswax and essential oil.

25:33That's what it's about, man. Treat your kids to a learning opportunity of making something that's nourishing for their skin and your skin. Make it a family situation. making an awareness, choosing alignment over illusion. So the more we know, the freer we become. When we see the truth, even when it's uncomfortable, we reclaim our power to live differently. Reclaiming our power one step at a time is in itself so powerful. So let's live consciously. Let's demand transparency. Let's stop calling destruction natural. Because when we stop buying into exploitation, we stop funding it. And that's when change begins.

26:24For the animals, for the planet, and for us. If this episode hit home, and it probably did, share it. Start the conversation. And for my Patreon people, you're going to get the full Monty. You're going to get more and more of this information all the time. deeper information solutions for these things and I'm stoked you're part of the family if you haven't signed up the super live patreon please do it is a small seven dollars and 49 cents to be a part of a community that we're trying to change things I don't doesn't matter if you eat meat or you don't eat meat or whatever it is I just want to be in a community that drives towards change, that drives towards another outcome.

27:11We don't have to be manipulated by algorithms and media and what's being told. Let's write our future and let's do it right now. So join my Patreon. For everyone listening to this podcast, I'm truly grateful for you. I'm Darren O 'Lean and this is Super Life and we all deserve the best life ever. Stay awake, stay curious, and keep living your super life.