The Bello Tallow Difference

Bello Tallow was founded out of the need for a tallow company with ingredient transparency & has taken this a step farther with PFAS testing.  In an effort to produce the cleanest tallow possible, Bello Tallow sends ingredients, processing materials, containers & products to a 3rd Party Laboratory.  Only the highest quality ingredients are used starting with only American Grassfed Association Certified Suet from regeneratively & humanly raised beef.

Tallow,  Latin for sebum or skin oils is the rendered (cooked) fat of a cow, sheep, bison, bear, deer, horse and some other animals.  Tallow is an ancient ingredient used by people for many things including: skincare, cooking, leather conditioning, medicinal uses, candle & soap making. 

Tallow lost popularity when petroleum based products became cheap & readily available.  The problem is toxic petroleum products lack the bioavailable nutrients & vitamins found in tallow & our skin suffers. 

Your skin literally SOAKS IT IN

Tallow is almost identical in amino acid complex & cellular structure as human skin making it easily absorbed.

Tallow contains high concentrations of fat soluble Vitamins A, D, & K which have a profound impact on skin & overall health.  Grass-fed tallow naturally contains Vitamin E (four times as much as grain-fed cows!), conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) which is anti-inflammatory.  Tallow is also rich in fatty acids including palmitoleic acid, stearic acid and oleic acid.

 

There are two very different types of fat on a cow & they produce two very different types of tallow once rendered.

Trim fat is what you are accustomed to seeing on the side of your steak or roast and renders into a soft fat similar in consistency to bacon grease.  It is perfect for cooking, mixing with beeswax for candles & even soaps.  While trim fat can be used for skincare, I find it greasy & prefer suet.

Suet is the nutrient dense fat that surround the kidneys.

Let's compare...

Trim Fat

  • aka intramuscular fat
  • what you are accustomed to seeing on steak or roast
  • greasy & soft like room temp butter/bacon grease
  • not as nutrient dense
  • more readily available
  • It is perfect for cooking, mixing with beeswax for candles & even soaps. 
  • While trim fat can be used for skincare I prefer suet.

Suet

  • aka KPH or Kidney fat
  • fat that surrounds the organs of the cow mostly around the kidneys
  • far more nutrient dense higher levels of: cancer-fighting CLA’s (conjugated linoleic acid), oleic, palmitic & stearic acids, Omega 3 fatty acid, bioavailable vitamins A, D, E, K
  • non-greasy rich golden color
  • superior for skincare. 
  • highly valued

At the end of the day, it's not that trim fat tallow is bad, but, in my opinion & based on my research, suet tallow is far superior & the only type of fat I use in Bello Tallow skincare products. 

 

How I Render

Fat is cooked slowly & the golden tallow poured through a stainless steel fine mesh strainer.  I water render my tallow on the first render to allow the gristle & meaty bits to fall into the water below.  This allows the tallow to have a less beefy smell & I waste far less tallow.  The meaty bits that are leftover are fed as a dog food topper so none of the cow goes to waste. 

While some tallow makers who dry render their tallow claim that the water will purify the tallow too much or that water will be in the final product, I respectfully disagree.  The water is simply at the bottom of the pot to help catch the meaty bits. Water always sinks to the bottom.  It is important when dry rendering or wet rendering to never completely pour out the bowl, but leave a small amount of tallow to avoid any water in final products. 

Bello Tallow is rendered twice at a very low temperature & then melted one final time to make a product to avoid overheating or compromising the nutrient density of the tallow.

*I never use cheesecloth in processing as I found that even "certified organic unbleached" cheesecloth was contaminated at 41 ppm Organic Fluorine & was contaminating tallow.  A fine mesh strainer & gravity doing its work is all one really needs to make clean tallow.

*Plastics & silicone are also avoided in processing. Warm tallow never comes into contact with silicone or plastic.