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WHY ARE GROWN MEN SUDDENLY RUBBING BEEF FAT ON THEIR FACES?
I assumed it was another internet skincare fad. Then I compared the tallow creams, balms and moisturisers men are actually buying. The beef fat wasn't the part that surprised me.
Daniel Reid
Cosmetics Product Developer & Industry Consultant
Updated September 1, 2026
THE BEEF FAT WASN'T THE PART THAT BOTHERED ME...
I work around cosmetic product development, so when grown men started rubbing rendered beef fat on their faces and calling it skincare, I assumed it was another internet trend that would disappear as quickly as it arrived. Then I actually looked into it.
A 2024 review of the available research found legitimate reasons to be interested in tallow as a moisturising ingredient, while also noting how limited the human cosmetic evidence still is beyond that. In other words, tallow wasn't nonsense. Some of the claims surrounding it were.
And strangely, the conventional skincare aisle wasn't giving me much more confidence. In the US, cosmetics generally don't need FDA approval before reaching the shelf. Fragrance blends can appear on an ingredient label simply as "Fragrance", without every individual component being listed. The FDA has also identified 51 PFAS intentionally used across 1,744 cosmetic formulations, while noting that safety information for many of the most frequently used PFAS remained incomplete.
That doesn't mean every moisturiser is secretly toxic. It does mean the words on the front of the bottle deserve a little less blind trust.
Which left me looking at two skincare tribes making opposite versions of the same mistake. Conventional brands can hide behind scientific-looking packaging and a formula that does little more than make your face feel less dry. The tallow crowd discovered a genuinely useful moisturising ingredient, then started treating "grass-fed beef fat" like the formula was finished the moment it entered the jar.
Add olive oil. Add honey. Add beeswax. Keep the ingredient list short. Call it ancestral. But being simple doesn't automatically make a formula complete.
The tallow wasn't the mistake. Stopping at tallow was.
So I compared the five approaches men keep buying to find out which ones actually make sense for daily skin use, and which ones stop just before the formula starts getting interesting. Because if the beef fat is worth keeping, the real question is what should come next.
WHAT A TALLOW FACE CREAM ACTUALLY HAS TO GET RIGHT
If tallow is going on your face every day, these are the five things I'd judge before deciding whether "grass-fed", "ancestral" or a short ingredient list actually makes it a better formula.
Keep those five in mind as we go down the list.
1
Swiss Made Anti-Aging Cream
★★★★★ 10/10
Highest Score + Recommended
Most tallow products ask one ingredient to justify the entire jar. Mythos was the first one I found that did the opposite. It keeps grass-fed tallow as the rich moisturising base, then builds the rest of the formula around it with copper peptides, 5% niacinamide and ectoin inside one finished Swiss-made daily cream. The tallow is important. It just isn't being asked to do everything.
Ingredient Profile
Copper Tripeptide-1 (copper peptide), micro-filtered tallow, 5% niacinamide and ectoin, supported by moisturising ingredients including jojoba oil, sweet almond oil and hydrolysed collagen.
The formula makes more sense when you look at the jobs separately. Tallow provides the rich moisturising base. Copper peptides are included for smoother- and firmer-looking skin. Niacinamide supports smoother-looking texture and more even-looking tone, while ectoin helps support dry, stressed-looking skin. Instead of adding another oil to tallow and calling it finished, Mythos uses the tallow as the point where the formulation starts.
Pros
Micro-filtered tallow inside a complete finished cream
Copper peptides + 5% niacinamide + ectoin
Swiss-made formulation
Fast-absorbing, non-greasy finish
One daily product instead of layering a balm, serum and moisturiser
Built for men who want serious skincare without turning it into a routine
Cons
It sits at the premium end of men's skincare, so if your only goal is finding the cheapest possible tub of tallow, this isn't it.
You aren't paying extra simply because the cow was grass-fed or because "copper peptides" appears on the label. The difference is the finished formulation around those ingredients and whether you value having them combined into one product you can realistically use every day.
What Stood Out To Me
This is where Mythos separated itself from the rest of the tallow category. It didn't throw away the reason men became interested in beef fat in the first place. It kept the tallow and finished the formula. The ancestral ingredient stays, but it sits alongside modern actives in a cream designed to absorb without leaving the heavy, visibly greasy finish that puts a lot of men off traditional balms.
Real Results (What Customers Report)
First few uses
The texture. The cream absorbs quickly, a small amount goes a long way, and men regularly mention being surprised that a tallow-based product doesn't leave the oily residue they expected.
First few weeks
Feedback starts moving beyond how the cream feels toward smoother-feeling, healthier-looking skin and the fact that the routine is simple enough to actually stick with.
Around month two
Some customers report more noticeable changes in overall skin quality, rough-looking texture and softer-looking lines with continued use.
With consistent use
Longer-term customers tend to talk less about an overnight miracle and more about not wanting to go back to what they were using before.
2
Plain Grass-Fed Beef Tallow
★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ 5.5/10
This is the product that made the whole trend understandable to me. Strip away the TikTok claims, the carnivore branding and the arguments about what people used 200 years ago, and plain rendered tallow is actually pretty simple: a rich animal fat being used as a moisturising balm. And that part isn't ridiculous.
A 2024 review of the available research found legitimate reasons for considering tallow as a topical moisturising ingredient, while also pointing out major gaps in direct human cosmetic research. That's an important distinction, because the internet has attached a much longer list of promises to tallow than the research currently justifies.
Ingredient Profile
Usually one primary ingredient: rendered grass-fed beef tallow. Depending on the brand, very simple formulas may contain little else. That's part of the appeal. No complicated ingredient deck, no long routine and no need to understand twenty different actives before putting it on your face. For somebody whose main goal is rich moisturisation, I understand why that simplicity caught on.
Pros
Extremely simple ingredient profile
Rich moisturising feel
Appeals to men trying to reduce unnecessary products
Usually easy to understand exactly what you are buying
No complicated skincare routine required
Tallow itself has legitimate reason to be considered as a moisturising ingredient
Cons
Tallow is being asked to carry almost the entire formula
Broader anti-aging claims often go far beyond the available human evidence
No copper peptides, niacinamide, ectoin or other targeted actives unless separately added
Texture and finish can vary depending on how the tallow is rendered and formulated
Some balms can feel heavier than men want from an everyday facial product
Simplicity becomes less impressive if the goal is more than moisturisation
Why It Falls Short
Plain tallow is where I think the internet got half the argument completely right. Men were tired of ingredient lists they couldn't understand, overcomplicated routines and products covered in marketing claims. So they went in the opposite direction and found something incredibly simple. The mistake was assuming that simple automatically meant complete.
If all you want is a rich moisturising balm, plain tallow makes a lot of sense. But if you're buying it because you want smoother-looking, firmer-looking, healthier-looking skin as you get older, the obvious question is: what in the jar is supposed to do the rest of the work?
Tallow wasn't failing. It was being given a job it was never supposed to do alone.
3
Olive Oil + Tallow Balm
★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ 6/10
This is usually the next step once brands decide plain tallow needs a little help. Take grass-fed beef tallow, blend in olive oil, maybe add vitamin E or a botanical extract, and you now have something softer, easier to spread and slightly more sophisticated-looking than a jar of rendered animal fat. Nothing inherently wrong with that. What I started questioning was what problem the olive oil was actually solving beyond giving you another rich emollient.
Ingredient Profile
Typically built around grass-fed beef tallow plus olive oil, sometimes with vitamin E, calendula or a small number of other naturally positioned ingredients. Olive oil has a long history of topical use, but the modern evidence isn't one-sided enough to make it the villain here. The better question is simpler: if tallow already gives you a rich moisturising base, how much further does adding another oil actually move the formula?
Pros
Simple, easy-to-understand ingredient profile
Tallow provides a rich moisturising base
Olive oil can improve spreadability and skin feel
Appeals strongly to natural and ancestral-skincare buyers
Usually avoids the complexity of multi-step skincare
Cons
Still heavily concentrated in the moisturising/oil side of skincare
Adding another emollient does not automatically broaden what the formula is designed to do
Usually lacks copper peptides, niacinamide, ectoin and other targeted actives
Finish can still run heavier than some men want on the face
Natural ingredients can become the selling proposition instead of the complete formulation
Olive oil itself does not settle the bigger anti-aging argument
Why It Falls Short
This is where I started noticing a pattern. Plain tallow gets criticised for being too basic, so another natural ingredient gets added. Then another. The label becomes more interesting, but the formula can still be solving essentially the same problem: keeping skin moisturised.
That isn't useless. But if the reason you moved beyond plain tallow was because you wanted a more complete face cream, simply adding another oil feels like moving sideways rather than forward. Ingredients aren't valuable because they sound natural together. They're valuable because each one brings something useful to the finished product.
Olive oil wasn't the problem. The problem was asking another moisturising ingredient to finish a formula that still needed more than moisture.
4
Multip-Step Routine
★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 7/10
Modern skincare has almost gone too far in the opposite direction to plain tallow. Instead of asking one ingredient to do everything, suddenly every useful ingredient seems to need its own bottle. Peptide serum, niacinamide serum, hydrating serum, eye cream, moisturiser, maybe another targeted treatment on top. Individually, plenty of these products can be excellent. The problem is that a man who simply wanted better-looking skin can end up spending hundreds building a routine he never wanted in the first place.
Ingredient Profile
Usually a combination of separate leave-on products targeting different jobs: peptide serums, niacinamide, hydrators, eye products and moisturisers layered together. Done properly, this can create a very comprehensive routine. It also creates more purchases, more decisions and more opportunities to buy overlapping ingredients without really knowing which bottle is doing what.
Pros
Can combine several genuinely useful skincare ingredients
Easy to target specific skin concerns
Plenty of strong, well-formulated products available
Highly customisable for experienced skincare users
Can create a genuinely comprehensive routine
Cons
Multiple products can become expensive very quickly
Several bottles means several purchases and applications every day
Easy to buy overlapping ingredients
Harder to know which product is actually making the difference
Far more routine than most men realistically want
Why It Falls Short
The problem isn't that multi-step skincare can't work. It's that the industry has become very good at turning one goal into five separate purchases. Want copper peptides? Buy a serum. Niacinamide? Another bottle. Moisture? Add a cream. Suddenly better-looking skin costs three figures and takes up half the bathroom shelf. For somebody who enjoys skincare, that might be completely reasonable. For most men, it's overkill.
The question I kept coming back to was simple: how many of those bottles only exist because nobody put the useful parts into one properly finished cream?
5
Basic Men's Moisturiser
★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 3.5/10
This is what most men are actually competing against when they discover tallow: the basic moisturiser they grabbed from a pharmacy, supermarket or Instagram ad because the packaging looked masculine and it stopped their face feeling tight after a shower. That doesn't make it useless. It does mean "my face feels less dry" has somehow become the easiest passing grade in men's skincare.
Ingredient Profile
Usually built around water, humectants, emollients, emulsifiers and preservatives, sometimes with fragrance or a handful of familiar actives added for marketing appeal. There are excellent conventional moisturisers out there, but the category also makes it remarkably easy for brands to launch contract-manufactured or private-label products that look completely different on the outside while offering a fairly ordinary formula underneath.
And being available for sale does not mean the FDA personally approved the finished formula before launch. In the US, cosmetic products generally do not require FDA premarket approval, although companies remain legally responsible for safety and proper labeling.
Pros
Cheap and widely available
Easy to use
Helps dry skin feel softer
Usually lightweight enough for everyday wear
Better than using nothing at all
Cons
Often built primarily around basic hydration rather than a broader anti-aging formula
Usually no GHK-Cu or copper peptide system
Usually no meaningful combination of targeted supporting actives
Fragrance is common in the category and adds nothing to the actual skin-support argument
Men can mistake immediate softness for a complete result
Easy to keep buying simply because it is familiar, not because it is doing much beyond moisturising
Why It Falls Short
This was the weakest option for me because the standard is simply too low.
Basic moisturiser can absolutely make dry skin feel better, but if that is the entire goal, almost anything reasonably formulated can compete.
And that becomes more important when you realise how easy it is to build a skincare brand around an existing contract-manufactured base, change the packaging, add a masculine name and call it premium. That business model is not automatically bad, and these products still have legal safety and labeling obligations.
But it should make you ask a harder question: am I paying for a serious formula, or am I paying for branding around a moisturiser that passed the easiest test in skincare?
Once I had compared that with tallow, modern actives and a finished formula designed around all three, "less dry" stopped sounding like enough.
Here's What Four Of The Five Are Missing
They all get something right. None of them quite finish the job.
Plain tallow gives you the rich moisturising base. Add olive oil and you mostly get more of the same. A multi-step routine can cover everything, but now you’re buying half the bathroom shelf. Basic moisturiser keeps things easy, but often stops at “less dry.”
The missing piece is simple: keep the tallow, add the modern actives, and finish the formula without turning skincare into a hobby.
My Recommendation
After comparing all five, Mythos was the one I kept coming back to because it doesn't force you to pick a side. You don't have to pretend plain tallow is a complete anti-aging formula, and you don't need five separate bottles just to get a decent mix of modern actives. It keeps the part of the tallow trend that actually makes sense, then builds around it.
The formula starts with micro-filtered grass-fed tallow, then adds copper peptides, 5% niacinamide and ectoin inside one finished Swiss-made cream. The tallow provides the rich moisturising base. The supporting actives are there for the smoother-looking texture, firmer-looking appearance and healthier-looking skin most men were trying to achieve when they started looking into better skincare in the first place.
It also solves something ingredient lists tend to ignore: whether you'll actually want to put the thing on your face every morning. Mythos absorbs quickly, doesn't leave the heavy greasy finish I expected from a tallow-based product, and doesn't turn better-looking skin into another hobby.
Keep the beef fat. Add the modern actives. Finish the formula. Put it all in one cream.
That simplicity matters more than it sounds. The best formula on paper is useless if it ends up sitting in the cabinet because the routine is annoying, and the shortest ingredient list in the world isn't automatically impressive if most of what you wanted from the product was never put in the jar.
Mythos sits at the premium end, so it won't make sense for somebody whose only goal is buying the cheapest moisturiser possible. But if you're already spending more because you want something better than basic hydration, I'd rather pay for one complete formula than assemble the same idea across several products or expect plain tallow to carry the entire job by itself.
More than 25,000 customers have already tried Mythos, and after going through the alternatives, I understand why the formula has found an audience among men who would never normally call themselves skincare guys.
The internet wasn't wrong about beef tallow. It just stopped the formula too early.