Jennifer, an enthusiastic client, recently asked if she could bring pig tallow to make soap to my workshop. Being vegetarian, I declined but decided to compare its benefits with coconut oil's in skin care products to insert in her course material when she comes for the workshop. I was also curious to investigate it since my grandmother used to make laundry soap with tallow. The research was fun and the results were not clear-cut.
Tallow or coconut oil in moisturizers
- Coconut oil is superior than tallow for antibacterial, antifungal, and contains antioxidants such as vitamin E, which can protect the skin from free radical damage and makes it effective against acne-causing bacteria
- Coconut possess potent moisturizing properties that help to hydrate and nourish the skin
- Tallow, specifically from grass-fed animals, shows a fatty acid profile of high-quality similar to human sebum meaning that the skin absorbs it with ease.
- Tallow is rich in vitamins A, D, E, and K that the skin can use.
Apart from the fact that tallow is an animal product, research shows that combining both:
- provides a lightweight and creamy texture, and long-lasting hydration
- allows the moisturizer to penetrate deeply into the skin
- helps to repair the skin's natural barrier
Being vegetarian, I use a combination of cocount and other oils, plant macerations, essential oils, and beeswax to achieve the same results.
Tallow or coconut oil in soap
In soap making, the goal is to achieve a balance between cleansing, moistening, and hardness according to your skin type and the qualities you enjoy. The soap's cleansing ability comes from lauric acid while hardness comes from myristic acid.
- Coconut contains 45 to 56% lauric acid and 16 to 21% myristic acid.
- Pig tallow generally containing less than 0.5–1.5% lauric acid and roughly 1–2% myristic acid.
- Beef tallow is 2% in lauric acid and 6% in myristic. It offers more in palmitic and stearic acids which contributes to hardness, not cleansing.
You also need to take into consideration that:
- the beneficial but delicate vitamins in tallow are destroyed by the heat generated when water is poured into lye
- there is a lot more to soap making than these two ingredients.
Long story short, ingredient-wise, coconut is clearly a better choice than tallow for your soaps whether you are vegetarian or not. Cost efficiency and praticality being other considerations, using tallow from animals grown on family farms justifies tallow's popularity.
More information
If you still want to use tallow, you need to first decide in what proportion you want your soaps to be hard, cleansing, and moistening, and then if you want to make them with tallow only or in combination with other oils.
NOTE: In general, you’ll need less lye for tallow than coconut oil, but the total amount depends on what proportion your tallow represents compared to the other oils in your recipe. That’s why you need to use a soap calculator, eg. https://soapcalc.net/calculator.
Author Bio
Isabela Blanchet has guided clients with sensitive skin for over two decades through gentle, plant-based care. In this post, she states her personal choices while recognizing that assessing the facts will help others make informed choices.
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