Oils and spreads

Is beef tallow healthy?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20266 sources

It’s a little better than butter on saturated fat and a lot worse than olive oil. A tablespoon of beef tallow has 6.4 g of saturated fat, about half its fat, against butter’s 7.2 g and olive oil’s 1.8 g. The 2026 US guidelines list it as an option after olive oil, and keep saturated fat under 10% of calories in the same paragraph.

Tallow gets pitched as the “real food” answer to seed oils, and in January 2026 it made it into the US Dietary Guidelines. It’s easy to take that as an endorsement. The line says: “When cooking with or adding fats to meals, prioritize oils with essential fatty acids, such as olive oil. Other options can include butter or beef tallow.” Olive oil comes first, and the cap on saturated fat comes right after.

What we’d do: use tallow when you want the taste, for roast potatoes or a steak now and then, and count it. A tablespoon is close to a third of a 2,000 calorie day’s line. For everyday cooking, olive or canola oil.

What’s in a tablespoon

Tallow is about 50% saturated and 42% monounsaturated, so it’s less saturated than butter and far more saturated than olive, canola or any other plant oil on this site except coconut. Like butter, it carries a little natural trans fat, since that occurs in fat from cattle, and the FDA’s trans fat ban never covered it.

The fight

Tallow’s fans make two points. It’s a traditional, unprocessed fat, and not every saturated fat acts the same. The second is true. In hamster experiments, the 18 carbon kind (stearic acid) didn’t turn down the liver’s LDL receptors, while the 12, 14 and 16 carbon kinds did. But food labels count them all as one number, and in 15 trials of cutting saturated fat as a whole, people had 17% fewer heart events.

We haven’t found a long-term trial of tallow against plant oils for heart disease, and the 2026 guideline itself says “More high-quality research is needed to determine which types of dietary fats best support long-term health.” Until someone runs that trial, we’d count tallow by its saturated fat, 6.4 g a spoon.

Frying with it

Tallow wasn’t in the one lab test of supermarket oils that measured smoke points side by side, so we don’t have a measured smoke point to give you. The 2026 guidelines do say to swap deep-fried cooking for baking, broiling, roasting, stir-frying or grilling, whatever the fat. Oil compare puts tallow next to any other cooking fat.

Your line 22.2 g

11.2Coconut oil7.9Ghee7.2Butter6.4Beef tallow5.0Lard2.3Peanut oil1.9Sesame oil1.8Olive oil1.7Corn oil1.6Avocado oil1.4Sunflower oil1.0Canola oil0.8Safflower oil

FirstOlive oilCanola oilAvocado oilCorn oilSunflower oilSafflower oil, high oleicPeanut oilSesame oilButterGheeLardBeef tallowCoconut oilSecondOlive oilCanola oilAvocado oilCorn oilSunflower oilSafflower oil, high oleicPeanut oilSesame oilButterGheeLardBeef tallowCoconut oil

How you'll use it

AnyFryingSautéing or roastingBakingDressing

Coconut oil

11.2 g saturated a tablespoon

50% of your 22.2 g line

Mono

0.9 g

Poly

0.2 g

Saturated share

83%

Smoked at 376 °F (191 °C) in one 2018 lab test of supermarket bottles.

The most saturated cooking fat, about 83%. Use it for flavor, not as your everyday oil.

Olive oil

1.8 g saturated a tablespoon

8% of your 22.2 g line

Mono

9.9 g

Poly

1.1 g

Saturated share

13%

Smoked at 404 °F (207 °C) in one 2018 lab test of supermarket bottles (extra virgin 404 °F, olive 406 °F, virgin 348 °F).

Everyday cooking, roasting and dressing. In the test, extra virgin olive oil made the fewest breakdown compounds averaged over both heating runs, with coconut oil close behind.

The heat test

300°350°400°450°500°Deep fryingCoconut oil376 °FOlive oil404 °F

Deep frying usually tops out at 356 °F (180 °C). Averaged over both heating runs, extra virgin olive oil made the fewest breakdown compounds of the ten bottles, with coconut oil close behind, and canola the most. Smoke point didn't predict that. The lab was an olive oil company's (de Alzaa 2018), and the test bottles were Australian.

These are the US guideline's lines. The Gyroscope app personalizes yours.