Rendering Fat with Farrow Skincare Founder Charles Mayfield

All right, here we go. Charles Mayfield, founder of Pharaoh Skin Care. Very excited to be talking with you. We met what, I guess over a year ago.

It was ketocon.

Ketocon. So I guess under a year, it.

Feels like coming up on a year.

I feel, it feels like I've known you a long time. So it's been under a year. But immediately connected with you and just loved you and, and what you're putting out in the world. And I'm just very excited to share Pharaoh with our audience and anyone that's joining on January. So please share a little bit about what, why lard and skincare. Like that's not something you associate A, with a male and, and B, I mean I imagine even when people meet you and they hear oh yeah, I do skin care, like they don't associate it with even your, am I correct?

You know, everything about what I do is weird. And, and I, I appreciate that. I would say yes, James, a lot of brother from another mother vibes between us and incredibly grateful to know you and, and, and pluck and what you guys are up to. And it's, it's a, the thing I've learned this Christmas and sort of holiday season is the, the universe of what I would say soup to nuts, top tier, high quality human health oriented consumer products brands is growing. And so it's still a very small universe, but I'm immeasurably grateful to share it with you. And so, gosh, well, why lard? Why me? I spent a lot of time in the health and wellness nutrition space and I mean I, you know, my, my ex wife and I have published a number of cookbooks in the paleo sphere, Paleo universe. Again, high correlation to carnivore, high correlation to everything these, these shared communities that we're speaking to. And, and then I had this watershed moment with skin care and I, I, I had a sunburn. You know, I could, I would argue, make the argument that a burn, wind burn, sunburn, razor burn, a burn is probably the most common acute skin condition. And so I had a real nasty moment with it and in an act of, I would say equal parts curiosity and desperation, decided to use lard. I was farming at the time, had to hang my farmer hat up about a year ago, but I was pasturing my own pigs, sort of a micro Polyface farms model and saw tremendous healing by utilizing my, I had a jar of lard in my refrigerator that I was cooking with. You know, that's, that's the background, right? And yeah, in an act of desperation, curiosity gave it a whirl. And so why lard? Pigs and humans are, they're my favorite farm animal. I pastured pigs, chickens, beef, turkeys. This was our, our micro farming enterprise. But pigs are amazing. I would, I would say that human, human evolution and the human thriving go lockstep with, with the amazing utility and diversity of pigs. They're incredibly smart. They're monogastric omnivores, just like us. And so they're highly adaptive to multiple different environments. They can thrive on a lot of different food sources just like humans. You know, there's optimal and then there's survival and, and pigs are really good at all that. And so, you know, at the end of the day, if you raise a really healthy, happy, what I like to call one bad day pig that not only tastes delicious and, and, and is fantastic for the land in terms of like soil building and, you know, pigs are going to do things to the soil. Yes. A pig is happiest when it's rooting and, and, and laying in the sun. And so, you know, just like any other species or animal in a, in a domestic environment, domesticated environment, that's a, that's a, it's a, it's an asset and a liability, right? It's, it's, it's measured disruption right on the landscape. For anyone that's ever had backyard, again, chickens are another monogastric omnivore. If you've ever had a backyard chicken coop, if that coop stays in the same place for more than a month, what do you have? You have a moonscape. Because every conceivable piece of grass that's going to grow up out of the ground, that chicken comes along and eats it. So you have, you know, without movement, you have a moonscape. Pigs have that same degree of potential destruction if you leave them in the same place. But we've got all this amazing technology now. You know, people think technology, they think iPhones, I'm talking about like portable energizers, lightweight, portable electric fencing, all these really cool things that allow us to take an animal like a pig and I call it nook and cranny farming, like sticking them in really interesting places on your, on your landscape that, that cows may not want to go and there's no food for cows there. And yeah, they're an amazing animal and their fat is unbelievably powerful medicine for our skin. So that was a really long winded answer to why lard.

Yeah, well, so share. Let's go into large specifically because, you know, when you look at animal based skin care, the, the fat that probably is most prominent is tallow. I know in non animal skincare you'll see like coconut oils use, palm oils use, you'll see those kind of things, olive oils. But in animal base it's tallow is probably the most prominent. And you know, and there's, there's a handful of you that are using lard. But how you talk about lard and why it's potentially, I don't know if this is the right language, but better for your skin than even tallow because I know you still have a little tallow in your product as well, but it's predominantly lard. So can you talk a little bit about how. Of why specifically lard is very receptive to the human skin and why that's the fat you chose over tallow or duck fat or chicken fat, you know, any other animal fat out there?

Sure. So we use as a general statement, we use three fats in our products. We use lard, we use leaf lard and we use tallow. And so let me just real quick wrap a bow around each of those. So tallow again as you mentioned, most people are very familiar with that. Tallow is a placeholder term for the rendered visceral fat from a ruminant. Now that's most commonly a cow, but you can have elk tallow, you know, bison tallow, any, any ruminant herbivorous species. So that's over. Here's tallow, leaf lard. We'll start there. Leaf lard is the tallow equivalent for a pig. So it's the, it's the visceral, the kidney fat of a pig. And you render that. Okay, so that's leaf lard. And then lard is, is unique. That doesn't, Lard doesn't have a real comparative friend in the beef industry because most of the subcutaneous fat on, on beef is, is repurposed back into the grind to give you your, your lean to fat ratios for a grind. And, and it's incredibly hard to, to pack, especially in a grass finishing business. It's incredibly hard to pack extra fat on a ruminant animal. You know, pigs, again, omnivores, you just, just feed them and watch them grow. So, so those are the three fats. Okay. I find myself saying this all the time now. The swine is divine. But the lard is hard because of the similarity between pigs and humans. They metabolize vitamin D the same way we do. They store vitamin A, E metabolically. The exact Same way humans do. So diet, environment and sun exposure, those three, that trifecta of, of sort of proper nutrition and also proper lifestyle allows a pasture pig to metabolize and also store all the vitamins and minerals that, that our skin craves in their subcutaneous fat. So we use lard, leaf lard and tallow in our product at different ratios. You know, again, everyone's familiar with tallow. It was, everyone's familiar with tallow because tallow was not attacked. This is my opinion, this is my hypothesis. But if you look back into the origin of cottonseed oil and Crisco, they dyed Crisco, which is cotton seed oil, they dyed it white. And they dyed it white because at the turn of the century, if you were making soap and candles, you used beef tallow. If you were cooking or baking or frying, this is across the board, you were using lard lard or leaf lard. Lard and leaf lard were the, were the preeminent cooking fats, baking fats. At the turn of the century. Tallow was over here in candles and soap making world. Like it wasn't, it really wasn't a staple in, in, in the nutrition cooking side. Now who made it popular? Arguably McDonald's, because tallow remained a, a stable cooking fat up until the. What when did they stop? The late 80s?

Yeah, I think it was early 80s or. Yeah, 80s, something like that.

So, so the most popular, most ubiquitous restaurant, fast food restaurant in the world was using tallow, which is, you know, arguably one of the reasons why their fries were so damn good was using tallow up until the early 90s. And so, you know, for whatever reason, we've lost our connection with lard in many respects. I don't remember if that answers the question. Lard, leaf, lard and tallow.

Well, well here, this brings up a question. So I know leaf lard is used a lot in baking mostly because it's so clean, right. It doesn't have a real strong flavor. So what from. Why is it that lard has that flavor and leaf lard doesn't? Is it because it's, it's subcutaneous, it's kind of closer to the skin and it's taking on other, I don't know what other flavor from the muscle or something like that.

Great question. Yeah, I, I have a, I have an answer. I have an incomplete answer. Okay, so the incomplete answer is because if you, if you stack lard and tallow up next to one another and you do a smell test, I'm going To tell you that tallow has the most.

Yeah. Strongest smell.

Strongest smell of the, of the three fats. Everyone thinks lard smells like bacon drippings.

No, that's only.

Does not. Yeah, that's, that's smoked and cured and you're usually rendering that bacon drippings with cooked meat. When we wet render all of our stuff. In fact, when you, when we were. Before we hopped on here. I'm at the church today, my local church, rendering fat. So I've got some, I've got some pots on the stove during this interview, which is kind of fun. But. Yeah. So the reason, if we look at lard and leaf lard. The reason. Leaf lard is what I would call colorless and odorless, which is why it was prized as a baking fat because it didn't impart any flavor or smell on the pastry. The reason it's colorless and odorless is because visceral fat, kidney fat, the biological function of that fat is to protect your organs. It's not to store vitamins and minerals for the winter. Subcutaneous fats role biologically, whether you're a ruminant or, or a, you know, any mammal, any mammal. Subcutaneous fat, the biological function there is store things for when I need them later, right? And with cows, you know this, your listeners that don't know, if you go by to the store and you buy a, a steak at, at your Costco or wherever, right? And you go get a ribeye, the, the fat on that ribeye is white, right?

Yeah.

99 times out of 100, it's white. If you go, you know, go, go acquire a grass finished, you know, 24 month old, little older, it takes longer to finish on grass. But if you go buy a grass finished ribeye, the fat in that ribeye, which is subcutaneous fat, is yellow. Why is that? Because that feedlot cow had built up and stored beta carotene in its subcutaneous fat, right? And you, you, that last two months, three months where you put them on a feedlot and just fatten them up. Well, the, the diet they put that cow on or steer is devoid of beta carotene. There's, there's, there's no fresh veggies, right. At a, at a feedlot, if you're lucky, it's like hay, but it's, it's a lot of nasty stuff too. It's just calories, right? And so over that two months, because beta carotene is critical to optimal ruminant health, it's leeching beta carotene out of its fat stores. Same way the ketogenic diet works for humans. Like we're, we're unbelievable at taking excess calories and storing them as fat. Because in a, in a evolutionary winter devoid of food, you know, outside of what you could maybe scavenge, we needed to be able to, to store lots of calories for the winter. And so, so lard is, and you've heard this like everyone's heard like Spanish acorn finished, you know, cured hams, right? So a pig will metabolize and impart flavors, smells in their subcutaneous fat depending on what they're eating. And so why does tallow smell, in my opinion more than lard? Because it's, it's subcutaneous fat, right? It's, it's, it's like leaf lard. And so intuitively I'm thinking it should be odorless too. But I, I think the metabolism and storage and mechanisms of an herbivore, a ruminant animal, multi chambered stomach animal, are just simply different than that of an omnivore, a monogast omnivore like us or pigs.

Which is why you choose that over the, you know, predominantly over the other.

Yeah, yeah. So, so the other thing, and your audience will know this tallow at room temperature is rock hard. Like you've gotta, you gotta really dig into that stuff. Which, which again speaks to probably why it was, it was less liked in the culinary world because you, you can't just spoon out tallow, right? You gotta melt it and then, you know, there's an extra step there now in a fryer, that's no big deal. But anyway, so we, we use our early recipes. When I discovered how the lard works in mysterious ways, I went to the Google and I said, how do you make skin cream? Okay. And it gave me a recipe. I'll never forget the first recipe I saw, I think it was from Katie the Wellness Mama's website or one of these sites. But it was like take this much distilled water, this much coconut oil and this much beeswax as emulsifier and you heat them all up and then you mix them together and voila. Well, I just did a one to one substitution of lard for, for, for coconut oil and made this unbelievably incredible cream, right? Until it went rancid about three or four days later. You know, it was because the water is what feeds the microscopic organisms, right? And so that's how mold and bacteria grow. So when at some point I realized I'm not A chemist and I don't want to put toxic goop in my product. So I kicked the water out. I wanted to tinker around with the viscosity of our product to be closer to a natural skin cream. You've used our products before and as long as it's not too hot outside, everything melts at a certain temperature. But as long as it's not hot outside, our product has a really creamy, you know, texture to it. That's because when I got rid of lar or when I got rid of the water, I brought tallow in. I love tallow. Why is tallow is great. Okay. I have to be careful here because I, I do think that lard from we call it smart lard. I, I do think that you have to, you, you absolutely must raise the pig and feed the pig properly, otherwise you run the risk again because of how effective monogastric omnivores are at storing their environment. You know, nutrition, sun exposure or lack thereof, toxicity, sickness, wellness, all of that stuff manifests in our subcutaneous fat. And so, you know, I, I, I believe that our smart lard is more aligned with human biology than tallow. Tallow is fantastic. We use it in our products, but it's an ingredient. It's not the, we lead with lard. I find myself saying that a lot.

Yeah, I'm a fan of using multi species products. I think some people get so dogmatic about how like for example, ice cream, even like when I, when I make ice cream, I use cow's cream but goat milk because I find it creates a lighter ice cream naturally, lighter ice cream. Whereas if you use cow's milk and cow's cream, it's just really heavy and it leaves that coat on your tongue, you know, I mean, so yeah, I just blew your mind right there. I don't, I don't share.

That's brilliant.

Yeah, I don't share my recipe for ice cream much yet. But, but I will eventually. But yeah, it's a mean, it's just an amazing ice cream. But, but I'm using multi species so I really get it around the skincare and how that would, how each might serve the other. You mentioned there's two things I want to quickly cover. One is just, just because I, I want people to understand the process and for the sake of transparency, rendering fat, you said you're, you're no longer adding water to your product, but yet you're rendering the fat with water. You said we're doing a water render. So for the people. I know what that is. But maybe you can just share with everyone what that is. Just, just briefly, just, just so people understand what, what your, the process of making your skincare is.

Absolutely. Well, listen, I spend a lot of time educating people on lard. So, you know, obviously there's, there's a piece. So there's two predominant methodologies for rendering fat. And I say fat at large, regardless of, of the source. But let's say animal fat, you know, plant based fats are a completely different ball of yarn. That's a lot of grinding and pressing and anyway, so there's wet rendering and there's dry rendering and, and cooking bacon might be the best example I can think of of a dry rendering situation. There's no water involved. You're just eating, slowly heating up the, the fat and you're, you're left with this, with, with what's left over, which is the rendered fat. The bacon drippings when you, when you wet render. So the process. I'll just tell everybody the process I did this morning. So I got a bunch of pig fat back. I've, I've sliced it, I'm running it through. You would laugh. I'm running it through a hand grinder right now. I, in fact, I went and saw our buddies Philip and Courtney at Carnivore Bar. I know they're involved with this. And he was showing me his like Mack Daddy little, little grinder that he bought for like, you know, it was like 6 or 700 bucks, which was a whole lot of money for me early on in the business. So I bought like this little 150$, like half horsepower grinder to grind my fat. I ended up burning through like two or three of them. So now I just, I literally hand grind the fat. So I, I've cut it up, it fits in the mouth, I grind it, and right now it's sitting on a pot. I put about a quarter inch of water in the bottom of that pot. That is to keep it from burning.

Burning. Yep. Yeah.

And, and everyone knows fat rises oil and water separate, right? And so the water in the bottom of that pot is just helping to alleviate or, or reduce the likelihood of any burning. Because that, the, the burning of, you know, the, the little bits of meat that are in there potentially, or anything like that, that's what will make your, your fat have an odor more than anything else is. And so we take our extra caution in sort of being very gentle with how we render it. But yes, when you talk about wet rendering, the water is there, it's evaporating. It's slowly evaporating. Yeah, because it's heating and so it's coming out. And then we, I sort of almost do a double distillation, if you will, to give a, to give an alcohol reference. But when I'm rendering. So when I go back to the kitchen here shortly, I'll have a pot in the middle that's empty, you know, perfectly clean pot. And so I will put a seb over the top of that with cheesecloth. And so as I'm scooping out the rendered, you know, liquid fat, liquid gold I call it, it's then going through a, through a cheesecloth, just, you know, just getting rid of any particulate matter. And then once that pot's full, then I will actually pour that off into another pot. So it's sort of like we have almost an extra step or two just to, just to make sure that, you know, our, our end ingredient, the fat is, is the cleanest I can make it.

Yeah, that's great. Now you mentioned something a little earlier and it's on your website. You said smart lard and you've already touched on a little bit, but I'd love you to go into that because that's one thing we really push during our January month is not only animal based eating and products, but we're also educating around regenerative farming. And I know that's a part of your smart lard label. So can you talk a little bit about like the importance and the difference between just any lard you have touched on it, but maybe you can even bottom line it a little bit around why, why, you know, regenerative farming is part of the smart lard label and why that and the difference you see in, in that product from it?

Yeah, James, great question. So what is smart lard? Well, I trademarked it. We're the first lard game in town. Like, you know, you've alluded to this. A lot of the players in the healthier skin care market are tallow based. Love them all. You know, Van Man Tubes and company baseball. There's a bunch of great, great brands in the space and I want us all to be successful. But smart lard, I trademarked it because, you know, certified organic means something used to mean a lot more, but it means less now, you know. Well, animal welfare approved. There's all sorts of different criteria with pigs. So again, the swine is divine. The lard is hard. I would say this with generally any animal, but especially with pigs and chickens. Monogastric omnivores, their ultimate health is as much about how they're raised as is how they're fed. Okay? And a. A natural system, or as close to a natural system as you can get in your farming practices that mimics how nature works, which is animals move, you know, they. They don't. They don't stay in the same place for very long. They're not sitting in their own, you know, excrement and feces for very long. They get fresh air, they get fresh water, and they get to express their ultimate animalness. You know, pigs like to root. Well, your average industrial pig, which constitutes about 98% of the pork in this country, that pork is raised in a house, never sees the sun, and it's got a floor, you know, concrete slab or concrete floor. So they don't even. An industrially raised pig never gets to do the one thing that a pig. You know, it's like, I want to play professional football, or I want to go be a, you know, major league baseball pitcher. The minute a pig is on all four legs, it's like, I want to root and find grubs and. And seeds and nuts, you know, and so. So smart lard is. The role regenerative farming plays is it does three things. It works with the land and mother nature. Okay? So we're not. We're not creating. You know, part of the problem with our food system this day today is we've externalized a lot of the costs. You know, every time a hog farm in North Carolina or the Midwest, in Iowa, every time a hog farm that has one of these huge manure lagoons, you know, those break every now and then, and they leak, and next thing you know, they're in the waterway. And. And, you know, manures. Manure is like black gold. And so. But when you concentrate manure into this big lagoon, you turn an asset into a liability. Okay? And so how we raise these animals and working with land to build soil, right, which is. Which is the number one asset we're losing every year in this country and globally is soil. Our top soil. I forget how many hundreds of thousands of tons washed down the river every year. So, yeah, regenerative agriculture. And. And a pig, again, a monogastric omnivore, is a. It's a cog in the wheel of proper land management is what I would call it.

I like. I like that a lot. So. So not only is what they're being fed, how they're being raised important for the quality of what you're rendering from that animal, but also the health of the land as you're mentioning and, and there's parts, I mean this is what a lot of people don't understand with regenerative farming is that many of the, the animals on those farms are doing things particularly like you said, the pigs and even in some places cows sometimes they are managing and supporting that land in a way that humans never could. You know what I mean? Like, and so this idea of like that we don't need animals on farms is just completely bonkers. But, but I love that you are pushing not only now you know something that's interesting. I imagine this is true if we're talking about, because I talk a lot about this with organ meats like supporting like so and you're, you're touching on that with, with why you're choosing lard. Because that idea of, of how the pig, pig's skin and fat, how that their body responds to it takes in the nutrients from their food, but also the sun and in their environment because it's so similar to us. I imagine conventional pigs do, are not high in vitamin D since they're not getting access to the sun unless they're being fed synthetic stuff. But I imagine, you know, pastured pigs that are allowed to roam are getting, are that the meat, and not only the meat but also the lard in turn are much higher in vitamin D.

Wouldn't you say that it's, it's a more complete resource. You know, back to the example of this, of the store bought steak, right? That that cow was storing up all this nutrients, all these minerals and vitamins in its fat and then you know, you put it over here in an environment that's devoid of those things, well, it's going to leech them out. And so yeah, I mean I, you know, part of the reason I, one of the many reasons I launched this company was to shine a light on the unbelievable utility, effectiveness and benefit of pastured pork not only as a foodstuff but also as a, as a, as a skin care. And candidly James, most of the pigs in this country live an absolute horrid life. And so the more opportunities, you know, Pharaoh is an opportunity for a passion registered pork farmer to, to further value add to that carcass, right? Because you know, I mean I love pork chops and I love bacon and I love a good, you know, pulled pork is, is like heaven to me. And so all that's really well and good but, but also it's the same thing you're doing with plot, you know. And here we are coming up on Carnivore you know, worldwide Carnivore month. Like a true carnivore diet is about utilizing the whole animal.

Right.

And so, you know, you're utilizing the organs. I'm trying to utilize some of the excess fat. God, I, I long for the day along for the day that is hard for me to secure enough fat for my company. I cannot, I, you know, it's just, it's like I can't wait for the day where it's. And I know, I know organs are, are particularly more challenging environment. You and I have had some conversations, you know, again, both being consumer products, brands about, you know, the ills and everything else. And I know, I know the challenges you face from an ingredient standpoint are, are, are way up there. Yeah, but, but again, there's a part of me that's like, I long for the day when, when it's just when I, when I'm having to fight for my, for my fat, you know, because that means more. That means more people are cooking with it and more people are, you know, using with it.

Using it. Yeah, absolutely. I, I wholeheartedly agree. You know, we, we, we focus so much on, you know, we talk about recycling and like using renewable energies and stuff. Like, it's like, well, but if we're going to be in a meat eating society, which we are, and that's great, we should be using the whole animal. It's not only are we modeling that we're valuing that animal's life when we use the whole animal, but it's just, it's just the right thing to do, particularly when there are resources that the entire animal provide. Why wouldn't you use it? Right? Like, why wouldn't you? So kudos to you, Charles. I'm so grateful that we've connected and I'm also just incredibly grateful to have you guys sponsoring the organuary challenge this year. So excited to share your product, but the person that wins the challenge will be getting some products, some, some free product from, from Pharaoh. But those watching this video right now should have gotten access to your discount that you're providing to everyone. So please make sure to check out Faro Life. Actually, what is it? Pharaoh Life.

Pharaoh dot Life.

Oh, dot Life. Okay, and I'll have, I'll have the notes in there.

And the code is Organuary.

You know Organuary.

Yep.

And I will, I'll have that all down in the notes. But where can people find you on social media?

Instagram is Pharaoh Skin and Pharaoh is Farrow. W. Here we go on the shirt for those watching Pharaoh is. Yeah. F A R R O W. Pharaoh skin on Instagram, Pharaoh Life on Twitter. I haven't tick tocked yet. And I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a neophyte in this social media world. We're, we're too busy in the kitchen making great products.

Yeah. Well, make sure everyone check them out. I've used their product. They, they are how he talks about them. They're, they're so clean and, and just feel so good on the skin. And hopefully you get to check them out and see how great lard is and how, how, how, how much it repairs your skin as well. So thank you, Charles. I appreciate your time today and look forward to more things in the future.

Happy organuary, James.

Yeah, take care.