Everyone’s predicting beef tallow will be the cooking fat of 2026.
So we asked 100 digital twins of consumers what they actually plan to do.
Whole Foods put it in their trends report. Food media is running with it. The narrative is compelling: ancestral ingredients, high smoke point, nose-to-tail values.
But here’s what our digital twins of real home cooks told us:
- They’re not swapping out their olive oil
- They’re worried about cholesterol and blood pressure
- They don’t want their kitchen smelling like a steakhouse for three days
- Their air fryer plus avocado oil already works
When people do use tallow, it’s occasional and narrow: homemade fries, smash burgers, roast potatoes. Deliberate, high-heat moments where it makes a difference.
One respondent summed it up: “My husband’s on blood pressure meds and the house will smell like a steakhouse for days—I’m not swapping out my avocado oil for that.”
The takeaway for brands: Tallow isn’t a pantry revolution. It’s a performance ingredient for a defined segment.
The gap between what the industry predicts and what consumers actually do is huge. Trend reports are written to sound interesting, not to reflect reality.
If you’re building strategy around what Whole Foods put in a slideshow, you’re building on sand.
Talk to actual consumers. Or at least their digital twins.