Will’s World: Smelly TikTok craze is dripping with nostalgia
© Lee Boswell Photography Beef tallow is, as the popular parlance goes, having a moment.
You may rightly ask how a middle-aged farmer could possibly know anything about what’s currently in vogue with the fashionable chattering classes.
My numerous daughters, especially those of the teen variety, would strongly support your line of questioning. Nevertheless, I know it to be true.
See also: Will’s World: Trolls take a toll when farming meets Facebook
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How am I so certain of this? Because whenever I open Google on my phone, the headline story below the search bar tells me it’s so.
Just to be sure, though, and with detective skills that Columbo or Miss Marple would be proud of, I spent all of 10 minutes looking further into it online and can confirm that it is indeed the case.
Leap of logic
Aside from the fact that I’ve repeatedly tried to turn off anything that gathers my browsing data so that I can be constantly bombarded with personalised ads for things I don’t need (and I very nearly took a hammer to it and reverted to an old Nokia 3310 when it started listening to my conversations and targeting me that way too), it’s a bit of an odd story to hit me with.
My guess is it’s because I’ve been so excited by the current record cattle prices that I’ve been checking hourly on them online to make sure I haven’t dreamt it all – hence I’ve used the word “beef” far more than usual.
I also slow-cooked a brisket on the barbecue for the family a few weeks back (more on this unadulterated dad-triumph in a future column), and may have searched for a few recipes then.
But anyway, the hideous artificial intelligence thing that controls the algorithm has obviously decided that I must be interested in the western world’s latest dietary and skincare craze.
In truth, as a beef producer, not to mention a roast potato connoisseur, I am. But who do we have to thank for all this?
Apparently none other than the new US health secretary, RFK Jr, who’s on a noble quest to make America healthy again (let’s not mention vaccines here) by reducing their consumption of seed oils and increasing the use of good old-fashioned tallow for frying the nation’s food in.
I suspect it’ll take a little more than that, but who am I to judge our US cousins and the nutcases they vote for?
Wrinkle, wrinkle, little star
But the Maga alphas can’t take all the credit here, because it’s also down to those other redoubtable folks who’ve been responsible for every short-lived viral trend of the past five years – the TikTok influencer.
And they’re not eating the stuff, they’re slathering it all over their smugly irritating faces.
Does wonders for wrinkles, don’t you know. Protects the skin barrier and can also help with acne and eczema because it’s an anti-inflammatory (for the love of God don’t quote me on this).
I’d imagine it also makes you smell rather like the back of an Ifor Williams trailer that’s just pulled up in a livestock market, but perhaps that’s part of the appeal in these surreal times we’re living in.
It begs the question, though, what else from the 1960s will be back in style again soon? Civil rights movements? Miniskirts? Sending rockets into space? Oh.
Well, perhaps it’ll be the turn of decent music again soon. We can but hope.
Anyway, I’m off to look at finished cattle prices again, then I’m going to make some lovely bread-and-dripping sandwiches for my teenage daughters.
If they know so much about what’s fashionable, they’ll enjoy them, won’t they.