A Field Guide for Shopping: Managing High Triglycerides

General rules you can apply when you’re out for your weekly shopping venture, and happen to want to lower your triglyceride levels as well.

• Limit simple carbohydrate drinks such as sodas, fruit drinks, and other high sugar drinks.
• Decrease highly processed prepackaged foods such as muffins, cookies, high sugar cereals.
• Purchase plain yogurt and plain oatmeal and add your own sweetener yourself. If you do this you will be placing way less sugar in it versus purchasing it pre-sweetened.
• See the examples below to determine an approximation of how much sugar is in prepackaged foods.

Whenever possible add foods that are high in omega-3 fatty acids. These can help pull those blood lipids back in line. Examples include:

Avocados

A recent study in "Plant Foods for Human Nutrition" showed that avocado paste produced a 33 percent decrease in triglyceride levels in experimental animals. This may be due to the combination of avocado's polyphenol, carotenoid and chlorophyll content. All of these fight oxidative stress in the body and reduce fat storage in cells.

Kiwi

This simple funky fruit can have a profound effect on triglyceride levels. In a recent study, test subjects (humans) at two or three kiwis every day for 28 days. Their triglyceride levels were compared to the control group who did not eat kiwis. The kiwi consumers' triglyceride levels decreased by 15 percent.

We report that consuming two or three kiwi fruit per day for 28 days reduced platelet aggregation ... by 18% compared with the controls (P < 0.05). In addition, consumption of kiwi fruit lowered blood triglyceride levels by 15% compared with control (P<0.05).

Grapes

Reported at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, the authors showed that the letter-salad compound in grapes was just as effective as ciprofibrate (a triglyceride lowering drug). In addition, it outperformed resveratrol, its more well known cousin. The ability of pterostibene to improve lipid metabolism for triglycerides adds to the fact that it (as well as resveratrol) both have strong cancer fighting properties.

Olive Oil and the Healthy Diet

It seems like extra virgin olive oil is good for everything. So for us to say that it helps keep triglycerides under control should come as no surprise.

But it turns out that the link between triglyceride control and EVOO is only peripheral - that doesn't mean it's not there, only that the direct link has yet to be established on its own.

For example, HDL cholesterol and triglycerides are normally affected by the same factors (in opposite directions). If HDL increases, triglycerides decrease and vice versa. So those things that move cholesterol in a healthy direction will most likely move triglycerides in a healthy direction as well.

Extra virgin olive oil has the monounsaturated fats that definitely help improve cholesterol (raise the good, lower the bad). Thus, it is very likely that they're also going to help lower triglycerides as well.

Foods with alpha-lipoic acid can help lower triglycerides as well. You may have never heard of this "super antioxidant", but you can include it in your diet if you eat broccoli and spinach. If you're into internal organs, the heart, liver, and kidneys are particularly rich with ALA.

Examples of Daily Sweetened Food and Drink Intake

Avoid foods and drinks with elevated sugar levels. The charts below show food and drink examples that are over and under the daily recommended sweetener intake.

Your goal is to avoid fake sweeteners. When you are having sweeteners, choose foods and beverages made with the real deal, and try to stay under 6 teaspoons of added sugar per day.

Look for Hidden Sugar

• Always read your food labels and (as much as possible), try to limit foods that contain hidden in added sugars.
• Remember having a little bit of real sweetener every once in a while is an okay thing to do. But to prevent chronic diseases and specifically diabetes we need to decrease the amount of added sugar we are eating on a regular basis.
• Sugar is present so many processed foods. Use the chart below to help you determine where sugars may be hiding out.