Healthy Fats Day 2025

Happy #HealthyFatsDay!

The first Healthy Fats Day was established in 2018 by the Healthy Fats Coalition. This day celebrates traditional healthy animal fats, including pure lard, beef tallow, duck fat, butter, ghee, goose fat, and other animal-derived fats. These fats are currently experiencing a resurgence in American food culture, appearing in restaurants, fast food chains, and home kitchens. #HealthyFatsDay aims to raise awareness about the importance of fats in our diet and provides a platform for discussing the facts and myths surrounding them.

In light of the increased attention on fats in the news, supporters of the Healthy Fats Coalition have shared some interesting facts and myth-busters about beef tallow, lard, and animal fats that many people may not know. We are also curious about how consumer perception and market awareness of animal fats have improved over the past few years.

Below, we have shared these insights from our supporters.

Here’s a message from Chef Ryan Ross @thechefryanross at www.WeEatStrong.com:

“We have been fed the outdated rhetoric of low-fat diets for optimal health long enough! Consuming adequate grass-fed animal fats promotes healthy hormone production and cognitive function and supports healthy blood sugar levels. This means grass-fed animal fats are part of an anti-inflammatory diet!

As a chef in the wellness space, I am enthusiastic about seeing more people and more restaurants embrace tallow for their high-heat cooking in lieu of denatured, free-radical-producing seed oils. Grass-fed meats, whole eggs, fish, ghee, tallow,  and the like all belong in a diet geared towards optimal health and longevity.” 

Here’s a message from Cate Shanahan, MD, NY Times Bestselling Author of Deep Nutrition, Food Rules, The FATBURN Fix, and the latest Dark Calories, @DrCateShanahan at DrCate.com: 

“We stopped eating tallow and lard based on fraudulent claims that these foods had been linked to heart attacks. They hadn’t, and I discussed the evidence for this in my latest book, Dark Calories. Nutrition science, as we know it, is basically fake news. 

Thanks to Calley Means, who advises RFK and whose sister and co-author read my earlier books, more consumers are diving down the nutrition science rabbit hole and finding that we’ve all been sold a bill of goods!” 

  Here’s a message from founding supporter, Coast Packing Company @CoastPackingCo at CoastPacking.com:

“Aside from their unbeatable flavor, lard and beef tallow provide optimum nutrition for healthy growth and reproduction, and they help the body absorb important nutrients.

When heated, they do not release free radicals, which have been linked to cancer (as vegetable oils do). And health benefits include actually raising levels of good cholesterol.”

Here’s a message from Amy Berger, MS, CNS @TuitNutrition at StallSlayer.com/consultation:                                                                                                                          

"When people hear the phrase 'saturated fat,' they immediately think of a fatty steak, bacon, or some other fatty animal food. But the fact is, beef fat is about 50% unsaturated, and pork fat tends to be more than 50% unsaturated. Saturated fat isn't harmful to health at all - it does NOT "clog your arteries" - but even if it were, the most highly saturated fats are actually found in plant oils, like coconut and palm kernel oils.

As we've been nudged more & more toward 'plant-based' or plant-dominant diets and our health has worsened, people are starting to question whether animal fats - and animal foods in general - are harmful to our health, the way we've been perhaps erroneously conditioned to believe for the past several decades.”

Here’s a message from Bacon Up @BaconUpGrease at BaconUp.com:

“Bacon grease is about 50% monounsaturated fat, which is the same heart-healthy fat found in olive oil. It also has some saturated fat, which is more stable at high heat than polyunsaturated fats found in seed oils (which can oxidize and create harmful compounds).

Don't care for mayonnaise? Make "No Seed Oil" DEVILED EGGS with BACON UP Bacon Grease instead! Replace the mayonnaise in your favorite recipe one-for-one with Bacon Up (or try our CEO's favorite recipe!) for creamy, delicious, deviled eggs with a hint of rich, smoky flavor. “

Link to recipe: https://baconup.com/recipes/bacon-up-deviled-eggs/

Here’s a message from Brittany Hogan, Founder of Nefertem Skincare, @NefertemNaturals at NefertemNaturals.com: 

“Here's something that might surprise you—the Latin word for tallow is "sebum." Sound familiar? That's because your skin produces sebum, its own natural oil, to stay hydrated, soft, and protected. So, when people ask, "Wait, you put beef fat on your face?" the better question is—why wouldn't you? Tallow is about as close to human skin oils as it gets, which is why it absorbs beautifully without clogging pores, balances oil production, and delivers fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E, and K straight to your skin. It's almost like nature knew what it was doing.  

Meanwhile, modern skincare has people slathering on lab-engineered formulas, convinced their skin needs a 12-step routine to function. But the truth is, simple, traditional skincare often outperforms the overcomplicated potions lining the beauty aisle—and tallow is proof.“ 

“Not too long ago, if you told someone to rub beef fat on their skin, they would have looked at you crazy—like you were asking them to bathe in beef stew! But ask your great-grandma what she used for soap, balms, and skin moisturizers, and she'd probably say, "Oh honey, we used tallow for everything." 

For generations, tallow was the go-to for skincare, cooking, and even candle making—until the 1970s, when it got swapped out for lab-made and vegetable oil alternatives. In the last 10 years, however, as more people look at what's actually in modern skin care, they realize it wasn't just "something grandma used" —it was a time-tested essential.  

Thankfully, social media has helped fuel curiosity, leading many to explore the good, the bad, and the ugly of beef tallow skincare. And the verdict? The "bad" (it's animal-based) and the "ugly" (concerns about sourcing) don't hold a candle to the undeniable good—deep nourishment, clean ingredients, and results that speak for themselves. When it comes to skincare, history doesn't lie.”

Here’s a message from M.A.D. Foods, @MadGoodFood & @ButterCraftProvisions at MadFoods.biz:

One of Amy’s aha! moments in culinary school was a Gallic glare and incredulous rebuke when she uttered the words “bacon grease”. “We do not call it grease!” came the haughty response.

Rather than considering rendered fat a by-product (which it is) or throwaway (it’s not), we think of it as a smoky, multi-talented ingredient. We are all the richer for it.

Fatworks, An HFC Charter Member, Outlines the Trajectory of its Healthy Fats Business

Welcome to Fatworks, the Fattitude Adjusters! What is our mission? Our big fat mission: to educate the mainstream population about the benefits of using REAL cooking oils like tallow, lard and duck fat while crafting these traditional fats the most natural way possible. For years fat has been marginalized, (no to mention margarinized), maligned, slandered, beat up, picked on and falsely accused! But no longer, for Fatworks is the Defenders of Fat!  

                                                                                                                              David Cole, Fatworks founder

BACK IN 2010, David Cole, owner of Fatworks, hopped aboard the paleo train and had a hunch that a new generation of healthy-fats-seeking consumers were out there in search of well-rendered, premium tallow and lard. 

He just couldn’t find any product on store shelves. He and his wife, Mieke, set out to make their own, taking midnight shifts standing over a kettle in Portland, OR melting beef fat in sweltering conditions. At 3 a.m. with 300 pounds of fat and no customers, they looked at each other and asked, “Are we nuts?”

Decidedly not.  It quickly became clear they were on to something. With only vegetable, industrialized seed oils and coconut oils on the market, Cole set out with keto and paleo enthusiasts in mind, recognizing that a whole new generation was being educated about the benefits of healthy fats. Finding only lard or tallow at the farmer’s market, he realized that rendered animal fats were simply an afterthought.  But now, his company, Fatworks, was ready to give these farm fats a starring role.

Fatworks made its first batch, created a Facebook page and reached out to paleo influencers to sample before “influencers” was even a thing.  People went crazy for fat, confirming for the Coles they were both needed and wanted.  The next day, the Fatworks page got 2,000 likes and Cole contacted every small co-op in the country. Fatworks became the OG.  Literally no one else was doing what they were doing at retail. In the markets or grocery stores, lard that was bleached, deodorized and hydrogenated.

“We believed in the science with various studies out there,” Cole says. “There are enough people out there who believe and understand.  People who grew up in rural areas saw their parents eat lard every day, and died at 95.  Even without the paleo world, there are people who simply embrace healthy fats. Meanwhile the paleo people were doing all the education and legwork, fighting fat phobia.  People like Nina Teicholz (The Big Fat Surprise) and Gary Taubes (Nutrition Science Initiative) were doing the education for us.  I bought into it personally and started eating that way.  I ended up losing weight and felt better, never having any issues with cholesterol.  Research is bearing that out.

“It's amazing how much of our consumer base is eating fats strictly for health reasons,” he continues. “It's delicious but people don't care; they just want to make their food more gourmet, traditional.  We get calls every day from people switching from vegetable oil and eating cleaner.  In 10 years, it's so gratifying to see that.  It was fringy when we started. If you said 10 years ago I'm eating paleo, you'd need to give a 20-minute spiehl about what that is.  Now it’s in the mainstream.”

Known for premium quality, Fatworks sources its fat from small, U.S. based, pasture-raised farms, some so small that it would take a year to get a pallet’s worth.  Farmers couldn’t believe he wanted the fat they had routinely been throwin out, some even selling to diesel companies.  Fatworks ships the fat to a small artisanal USDA facility with two kettles in Longmont, outside of Denver. Once there, it’s ground and put into kettles - similar to the way someone might purchase from a butcher, chopping it up and putting it into a stock pot. The large kettles have better filters (unlike cheesecloth), which means no sediment or proteins get through.  Fatworks also adds a small amount of organic rosemary, a great antioxidant, to keep peroxide levels low without affecting the flavor.

Over the years, Fatworks has seen trends that include devotees injecting brisket with Wagyu tallow like a poultice (full-blood, A-5 highest rated Wagyu has more mono unsaturated fat), using Wagyu tallow on bison which is leaner, and people seeking goose fat/grease for the their lungs during the pandemic.  People have also been smoking and grilling pork with leaf lard (fat around kidneys) or lard made from trimmings and back fat.  Influencer Alton Brown even endorsed Fatworks Leaf Lard in People Magazine.

Cole credits some of Fatworks’ success and brand appeal to an irreverent, almost iconoclastic brand personality.  You’ll find that Fatworks is apt to frequently “Praise the Lard” and is encouraging “Fatworkers” to give themselves a well-deserved “Fattitude Adjustment.”  Says Cole: “We take crafting fat seriously and understand that many people who come to Fatworks do so as part of a huge lifestyle change, but at the end of the day, it’s fat, and if you can’t have fun with fat, then lard have mercy on you.”

As for new products on the horizon, Cole says Fatworks just launched a pre-cooked Duck Confit (duck cured in fat).  Among the other product line additions: Wagyu A-5 ultra premium skincare, including body butter and face butter.  And Tallow Tush, a unique product to treat diaper rash.  “All natural fats are ideal not just for eating but can serve as food for your skin,” Cole says.  Branded tallow candles and fat-based snacks, such as add-on-value bars, are also on the horizon.

Duck Leg Confit

Fatworks just launched a pre-cooked Duck Confit (duck cured in fat).