How is the evidence quite clear? Did you read the link? The only article you linked provided no evidence that tallow had oxidized cholesterol, only that 10% of the cholesterol had been oxidized after 376 hours of heating the tallow at 155 C. After 376 hours, or more than 15 days of straight heating, a 10% oxidation rate seems quite low, though clearly I have no idea what low is. This would imply to me that cooking a steak on low heat, say around 155 C for 30 minutes would oxidize virtually no cholesterol. Perhaps lots of cholesterol gets oxidized very quickly though and then comes to a halt, but from the limited info from the article, they mention oxidation increases over time so this scenario isn't as likely.
There is very little scientific data on the cooking or rendering of tallow for people to make absolute statements either way on the issue of how tallow is affected. So we need more studies. That said, it is still illogical for people to suggest that rendered tallow isn't a food that has been significantly changed from the raw suet it originated from. One only has to see changes in texture etc. to realise this.
I also don't see why not eating tallow anymore makes a case that tallow is bad either. I'd never even heard of tallow before this last year and you cannot buy it at local supermarkets here in the US. Perhaps tallow was used much more 50-100 years ago but since that time they have switched to primarily highly processed vegetable oils which is a far worse substitution. Its even relatively difficult to find organ meats as well.
I didn't suggest that tallow was bad because it's hardly eaten any more. I was merely pointing out that the reason why there are so very few studies done on rendered animal fats is because they are hardly ever eaten any more.
I agree that it would make sense that pemmican is a second class food simply because it is processed and that there is no evidence that paleo man would have consumed any rendered fat. Maybe they did. Its still rather strange though that there is more and more anecdotal evidence that pemmican could be indeed the same, or even better for health than raw meat. We simply cannot ignore this. Seeing that there still remains no scientific evidence that tallows contain toxins I will remain skeptical.
There is actually plenty of anecdotal evidence on this and other forums to suggest quite clearly that pemmican is very unhealthy by comparison to raw animal fat(plenty rawists mention eating pemmican not for health but for convenience for when travelling , mention of fatigue etc. with pemmican). As for pemmican in palaeo times, that is a very big stretch. Pemmican certainly could never have existed before the advent of cooking, and the only genuine evidence for cooking is c.250,000 years ago, so that covers only 10% of the Palaeolithic era. And I have mainly come across mentions of pemmican-manufacturing primarily in Arctic areas so the rest of humanity living outside the glaciers would mostly have never eaten the stuff.
Another point about pemmican is that it, much like supermarket foods, can be stored for very long periods. It is a general rule(and a palaeo concept) that the longer the shelf-life of a food-product, the more unhealthy it is going to be for you.
Also to add - It could be that pemmican, though second class food, can heal better than raw meat at first since everyone here for decades has already compromised their body's ability to do what evolution had intended it for it to do. For example, several have noted that taking HCL pills have greatly increased their digestibility of meat. Perhaps pemmican can be thought of as the same way. A man made product, though not perfect can be more effective than what nature has given us when having a compromised system. The game completely changes when you change the rules. The same plan(raw meat) might not work as well as it was intended to under the new rules (compromised body). Man changed the rules for good long ago and so maybe man needs to change the solution as well with pemmican being a slight modification.
Unfortunately for you, most people find raw meat fat works better for them than pemmican re digestion etc. I would agree that some people(usually older people) might feel the need to take HCL, especially after years of cooked-food-consumption wrecking their digestive systems, but it would be stupid for them to eat cooked animal fat such as pemmican in order to try to correct a problem caused by cooked animal fat in the first place.
As regards cooked animal food in general, there are now vast numbers of studies showing direct connections between cooked animal food consumption and lower lifespan, heart-disease,artery issues etc. These studies particularly focus on foods heavy in cooked animal fats as being the unhealthiest foods, containing massive amounts of toxins etc. So, any claims that cooked animal fat is healthy are already shot through. I'll grant that more studies need to be done on tallow, rendered or otherwise, but the weight of the evidence against cooked animal fats in general strongly suggests otherwise. One might make an arbitrary, unproven claim that pemmican is "less unhealthy" than raw fats, but that's all, really.
