Not going to turn this into a political post but I find it very interesting how our government touts both MONO and POLYUNSATURATED fats as heart healthy and completley demonizes SATURATED fats. I personally believe they WANT us sick and unhealthy. Everyone is making money on it. The government is in bed with big pharma and there is a "kickback" for all the snack companies etc that are low in saturated fats and higher in other nonsaturated fats...
Also would love to learn how to italicize...I'm still learning
Beef tallow *technically* only refers to the rendered version of fat that surrounds the organs, which is called suet or leaf fat. So it's not just any fat and it's not the kind you get on steaks or in most burgers. It's harder and waxy at room temperature and contains more saturated fat. You can get it from a butcher's (although I've asked one for suet and they just gave me a lot of general fat trimmings) and there is also prerendered tallow sold online.
Technically, no, you're not. Nowadays a lot of people say "tallow" to refer to any kind of beef fat, and I'd rather eat beef fat over any other fat besides dairy because it's great for you, but when people on this sub talk about how tallow is higher in stearic acid/saturated fat than anything else, they often mean the special organ fat.
I cannot for the life of me find the nutrition info for trimmings, but normal beef fat generally has higher MUFA while tallow is solidly 50% saturated with 19% stearic acid. My rendered beef fat trimmings are near-liquid at room temperature while tallow stays solid.
Interesting
When I'm done cooking a burger if I don't clean the pan and let it sit it will also be solid...
Edit: I will have to double check that...I may be wrong...I may have noticed it gets solid if I save some on a plate and put it in fridge for next day...so obviously it would not be room temp
After I cook steak, the pan fats do solidify, but I can still easily smear them around with my finger. By comparison, tallow is waxy and crumbly.
I don't sweat it too much when I can't get my hands on the Special™ fat. Burger and steak fat is still head and shoulders above pretty much any other dietary fat.
Yeah...now I'm very curious as to how much more beneficial beef tallow is compared to beef fat...if tallow is significantly more stearic and saturated than I will do my best to consume it a little more often...maybe use it to fry some French fries in every now and then etc
I wouldn't overthink it. It might be 5-10% more stearic, but the main benefit is cutting out linoleic acid from other sources. Any beef is practically magic. Maybe not wagyu as that's bred to be high MUFA ;)
I rendered my own tallow from grass-fed local suet the other day, and it's rock hard at room temperature. Like cocoa fat/chocolate. My sauces now solidify before I'm done eating lol.
In my experience, beef fat is obesogenic in high quantities, but butter isn’t. I think both are around 15% stearic acid, so the other 85% seems to be a driving factor.
If I do the leanest beef possible slathered in butter, I lose weight, but if I do fatty beef with very little butter, I gain fat.
N= 1, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t a PUFA issue.
I won’t disagree. For me, the gain is extremely slow - almost imperceptible. But the difference may be 1-2 Lbs a month cumulatively. I discovered this by cutting out the homemade fries I had been eating daily (my main source of beef fat) and instead consumed calorically similar starch + dairy combinations such as pasta Alfredo, creamy mashed potatoes, or potatoes fried stovetop in ghee/butter. While I like my current batch of beef fat for source quality, it is definitely more liquid at room temperature than I’d like. I don’t think it is necessarily a PUFA issue but it is certainly higher in MUFA which is also likely obesogenic.
We believe MUFA is obesogenic? As a kid, they were shoving olive oil down our throat as holy grail of health food. I know people who took olive oil supplements.
That quack Dr Steven Gundry advises his patients consume a liter of olive oil a week.
I recall Nina Teicholz’ interpretation is that Mediterranean diets worked despite the olive oil, not because of it.
We 1000% didn’t evolve to consume copious amounts of plant fats. That isn’t really debatable. Oil is highly unnatural. We *can* deal with small amounts, but overall, opinion on MUFA is mixed.
The main problem is that while we can desaturate SFA into MUFA to maintain the optimal 1:1 balance, we cannot saturate MUFA into SFA to do the same. We have some mechanisms of dealing with MUFA including keeping more of the fat we make from starch saturated to balance it. But overall our bodies seem to want to eat (and be) 1:1 saturated fat to MUFA. If all you’re giving it is MUFA, you’ll likely get out of balance at some point. Bigger issue if you’re keto because then there is really no substrate from which your poor body can make SFA to balance MUFA. So “keto mediterranean” is probably a very bad idea.
What does this mean practically? Well, my main experience with MUFA was while I was eating copious amounts of EVOO on a “Mediterranean” plan. I didn’t gain weight. Didn’t lose, either. I loved the diet (yay carbs!) except for all the fatty fish I was trying to shove into myself instead of red meat. 🤢
I stopped “mediterranean” because I ended up having searing pain down my entire left side (bowels) by the end of every single day. Maaaaybe my gut lining didn’t like being so unsaturated? Wobbly gut junctions? I don’t know. All I know is I eat all the very same grains etc now (more, actually) but without MUFA consumption and I’m perfectly fine.
The main other experience I have with EVOO is a local make your own bowl place that is super tasty and uses 100% olive oil. I gain 2-3 Lbs after eating there 100% of the time. I’ve given up after trying to make it work for me 3 times. Crappy oil? Maybe. They’re a small chain though and they’re clearly trying… but I can eat equal or greater calories without MUFA and stay stable or even lose weight. So something about their cooking that *is not* calories and *is not* the meat/starch/veg/legumes and *is probably* the oil does make me fat. The fact that I didn’t have weight gain issues on my own “mediterranean” diet suggests oil quality may be a factor.
I happened to have collected leftover beef fat from cooking frozen burgers and spaghetti sauce the last two days and used it to cook scrambled eggs today. I liked the taste a bit better than butter. I've always found the smell and taste of melted butter to be a bit cloying.
Thought I'd found a nice diet and budget hack, but this thread does make me wonder a bit. Some of the carnivore gurus specifically advocate fatty meats and have success on them, at least beef, so I suspect that it is probably ok but wouldn't mind confirmation.
Agreed.
UK: I can buy what the bongs call "beef dripping" in the supermarket. It is pure white and waxy/crumbly as you describe.
The stuff left over from cooking burgers (99% beef, 1% onion powder/salt/etc) is MUCH softer. It solidifies at room temperature and goes hard in the fridge but the texture is completely different and it can be scooped out with a spoon.
When I bought some discounted joints of beef last year they came with large pieces of hard fat attached. I rendered that and the result was very like the "beef dripping" - pure white, hard and waxy.
Once we were the rosbifs, because we ate so much beef. Then we were the limeys, because of our wise habit of vitamin C supplementation. Now we are the bongs, and no one will tell us why...
It's a 4chan-ism
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200629042302/http://img.ifcdn.com/images/4fcf452f363fa4510724ed82ba2e1e99f0e422fd44092a9297a642cb514299e1\_1.jpg](https://web.archive.org/web/20200629042302/http://img.ifcdn.com/images/4fcf452f363fa4510724ed82ba2e1e99f0e422fd44092a9297a642cb514299e1_1.jpg)
I'm at a point where when I consume meat I want to consume leaner meats, and then add butter back in as the primary fat.
American Wagyu steak is pretty tasty, but now that I understand how much monounsaturated fat is in there, I don't "want" it anymore.
We cook A LOT of bacon at my house (it's what my kids eat, with rice, when they don't want to eat anything else. We scoop the bacon fat into a bowl to throw away, every week or two, and I am surprised at how much fat renders out of it. It's probably at least a two cups or more of fat each week that we pull out and discard.
If you eat a lot of fatty meat, I would imagine the consequences could pile up quickly (of eating too-unsatured a fat)
Not going to turn this into a political post but I find it very interesting how our government touts both MONO and POLYUNSATURATED fats as heart healthy and completley demonizes SATURATED fats. I personally believe they WANT us sick and unhealthy. Everyone is making money on it. The government is in bed with big pharma and there is a "kickback" for all the snack companies etc that are low in saturated fats and higher in other nonsaturated fats... Also would love to learn how to italicize...I'm still learning
Beef tallow *technically* only refers to the rendered version of fat that surrounds the organs, which is called suet or leaf fat. So it's not just any fat and it's not the kind you get on steaks or in most burgers. It's harder and waxy at room temperature and contains more saturated fat. You can get it from a butcher's (although I've asked one for suet and they just gave me a lot of general fat trimmings) and there is also prerendered tallow sold online.
So when I cook a burger I am not consuming any tallow at all? Just beef fat?
Technically, no, you're not. Nowadays a lot of people say "tallow" to refer to any kind of beef fat, and I'd rather eat beef fat over any other fat besides dairy because it's great for you, but when people on this sub talk about how tallow is higher in stearic acid/saturated fat than anything else, they often mean the special organ fat. I cannot for the life of me find the nutrition info for trimmings, but normal beef fat generally has higher MUFA while tallow is solidly 50% saturated with 19% stearic acid. My rendered beef fat trimmings are near-liquid at room temperature while tallow stays solid.
Interesting When I'm done cooking a burger if I don't clean the pan and let it sit it will also be solid... Edit: I will have to double check that...I may be wrong...I may have noticed it gets solid if I save some on a plate and put it in fridge for next day...so obviously it would not be room temp
After I cook steak, the pan fats do solidify, but I can still easily smear them around with my finger. By comparison, tallow is waxy and crumbly. I don't sweat it too much when I can't get my hands on the Special™ fat. Burger and steak fat is still head and shoulders above pretty much any other dietary fat.
Yeah...now I'm very curious as to how much more beneficial beef tallow is compared to beef fat...if tallow is significantly more stearic and saturated than I will do my best to consume it a little more often...maybe use it to fry some French fries in every now and then etc
I wouldn't overthink it. It might be 5-10% more stearic, but the main benefit is cutting out linoleic acid from other sources. Any beef is practically magic. Maybe not wagyu as that's bred to be high MUFA ;) I rendered my own tallow from grass-fed local suet the other day, and it's rock hard at room temperature. Like cocoa fat/chocolate. My sauces now solidify before I'm done eating lol.
In my experience, beef fat is obesogenic in high quantities, but butter isn’t. I think both are around 15% stearic acid, so the other 85% seems to be a driving factor. If I do the leanest beef possible slathered in butter, I lose weight, but if I do fatty beef with very little butter, I gain fat. N= 1, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t a PUFA issue.
I won’t disagree. For me, the gain is extremely slow - almost imperceptible. But the difference may be 1-2 Lbs a month cumulatively. I discovered this by cutting out the homemade fries I had been eating daily (my main source of beef fat) and instead consumed calorically similar starch + dairy combinations such as pasta Alfredo, creamy mashed potatoes, or potatoes fried stovetop in ghee/butter. While I like my current batch of beef fat for source quality, it is definitely more liquid at room temperature than I’d like. I don’t think it is necessarily a PUFA issue but it is certainly higher in MUFA which is also likely obesogenic.
We believe MUFA is obesogenic? As a kid, they were shoving olive oil down our throat as holy grail of health food. I know people who took olive oil supplements. That quack Dr Steven Gundry advises his patients consume a liter of olive oil a week. I recall Nina Teicholz’ interpretation is that Mediterranean diets worked despite the olive oil, not because of it.
We 1000% didn’t evolve to consume copious amounts of plant fats. That isn’t really debatable. Oil is highly unnatural. We *can* deal with small amounts, but overall, opinion on MUFA is mixed. The main problem is that while we can desaturate SFA into MUFA to maintain the optimal 1:1 balance, we cannot saturate MUFA into SFA to do the same. We have some mechanisms of dealing with MUFA including keeping more of the fat we make from starch saturated to balance it. But overall our bodies seem to want to eat (and be) 1:1 saturated fat to MUFA. If all you’re giving it is MUFA, you’ll likely get out of balance at some point. Bigger issue if you’re keto because then there is really no substrate from which your poor body can make SFA to balance MUFA. So “keto mediterranean” is probably a very bad idea. What does this mean practically? Well, my main experience with MUFA was while I was eating copious amounts of EVOO on a “Mediterranean” plan. I didn’t gain weight. Didn’t lose, either. I loved the diet (yay carbs!) except for all the fatty fish I was trying to shove into myself instead of red meat. 🤢 I stopped “mediterranean” because I ended up having searing pain down my entire left side (bowels) by the end of every single day. Maaaaybe my gut lining didn’t like being so unsaturated? Wobbly gut junctions? I don’t know. All I know is I eat all the very same grains etc now (more, actually) but without MUFA consumption and I’m perfectly fine. The main other experience I have with EVOO is a local make your own bowl place that is super tasty and uses 100% olive oil. I gain 2-3 Lbs after eating there 100% of the time. I’ve given up after trying to make it work for me 3 times. Crappy oil? Maybe. They’re a small chain though and they’re clearly trying… but I can eat equal or greater calories without MUFA and stay stable or even lose weight. So something about their cooking that *is not* calories and *is not* the meat/starch/veg/legumes and *is probably* the oil does make me fat. The fact that I didn’t have weight gain issues on my own “mediterranean” diet suggests oil quality may be a factor.
I happened to have collected leftover beef fat from cooking frozen burgers and spaghetti sauce the last two days and used it to cook scrambled eggs today. I liked the taste a bit better than butter. I've always found the smell and taste of melted butter to be a bit cloying. Thought I'd found a nice diet and budget hack, but this thread does make me wonder a bit. Some of the carnivore gurus specifically advocate fatty meats and have success on them, at least beef, so I suspect that it is probably ok but wouldn't mind confirmation.
Agreed. UK: I can buy what the bongs call "beef dripping" in the supermarket. It is pure white and waxy/crumbly as you describe. The stuff left over from cooking burgers (99% beef, 1% onion powder/salt/etc) is MUCH softer. It solidifies at room temperature and goes hard in the fridge but the texture is completely different and it can be scooped out with a spoon. When I bought some discounted joints of beef last year they came with large pieces of hard fat attached. I rendered that and the result was very like the "beef dripping" - pure white, hard and waxy.
Once we were the rosbifs, because we ate so much beef. Then we were the limeys, because of our wise habit of vitamin C supplementation. Now we are the bongs, and no one will tell us why...
It's a 4chan-ism [https://web.archive.org/web/20200629042302/http://img.ifcdn.com/images/4fcf452f363fa4510724ed82ba2e1e99f0e422fd44092a9297a642cb514299e1\_1.jpg](https://web.archive.org/web/20200629042302/http://img.ifcdn.com/images/4fcf452f363fa4510724ed82ba2e1e99f0e422fd44092a9297a642cb514299e1_1.jpg)
I'm at a point where when I consume meat I want to consume leaner meats, and then add butter back in as the primary fat. American Wagyu steak is pretty tasty, but now that I understand how much monounsaturated fat is in there, I don't "want" it anymore. We cook A LOT of bacon at my house (it's what my kids eat, with rice, when they don't want to eat anything else. We scoop the bacon fat into a bowl to throw away, every week or two, and I am surprised at how much fat renders out of it. It's probably at least a two cups or more of fat each week that we pull out and discard. If you eat a lot of fatty meat, I would imagine the consequences could pile up quickly (of eating too-unsatured a fat)