Stearic acid, a saturated fat linked to anti-cancer properties, shows up in beef tallow (15-20%), cocoa butter (34%), and shea butter (30-50%). The claim: beef fat's stearic acid content might protect against cancer, contradicting the idea that red meat raises colon cancer risk.
What foods are rich in stearic acid? The word "stearate" actually comes from the Greek word for tallow. Tallow is rendered beef fat and is about 15-20% stearic acid as the proportion of its overall fat. But there are even richer sources of stearic acid, including cocoa butter, which is about 34% stearic acid, and shea butter from the nut of the African shea tree, which contains over 30% stearic acid and in some cases up to 50%. Now, if you've been paying attention, and I hope you have, you might have observed that one implication of these data is that beef fat could have an anti-cancer property due to its stearic acid content. That's a provocative possibility since red meat intake is traditionally thought to be linked to increased colon cancer risk.
