# Proper Diet for Elevated Triglycerides?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-diet-for-elevated-triglycerides/1024970>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [November 18, 2025, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-diet-for-elevated-triglycerides/1024970 "2025-11-18T23:28:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\
**Post date:** [November 19, 2025, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-diet-for-elevated-triglycerides/1024970/21 "2025-11-19T17:33:49Z")

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Fortunately my son only ever drinks water. He also doesn’t care for candy. But he has an extremely limited diet and I think it will catch up with him someday.

So yeah I’m mainly cooking for two. All of my husband’s allergies require me to omit a lot of unhealthy ingredients, including anything cream or cheese based, no beef, etc. So anytime I make a meal for the two of us if it’s on the healthy side, by necessity.

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**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\
**Post date:** [November 19, 2025, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-diet-for-elevated-triglycerides/1024970/22 "2025-11-19T17:41:31Z")

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And maybe supplementation with red yeast rice?

> **[Impact of red yeast rice supplementation on lipid profile: a systematic...](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36259545/)**
>
> In conclusion, this comprehensive article and meta-analysis showed that RYR significantly decreases TC, TG, and LDL-C as well as increases HDL-C.

> Conclusion: In conclusion, this comprehensive article and meta-analysis showed that RYR significantly decreases TC, TG, and LDL-C as well as increases HDL-C.

TC: total serum cholesterol  
TG: triglyceride  
LDL-C: low-density lipoprotein cholesterol  
HDL-C: high density lipoprotein cholesterol

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**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\
**Post date:** [November 19, 2025, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-diet-for-elevated-triglycerides/1024970/23 "2025-11-19T17:58:12Z")

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It looks like fish and avocado/olive oils are good at “reducing” triglycerides (I’d venture to guess that it’s more a matter that having a better **ratio** of fat types is the key, so swapping these in is better than adding them on top).

Niacin (Vitamin B3) can help to reduce triglycerides. (Mechanism of action described below.) Looking for a good source of niacin that can be supplemented into food, I see that peanut powder would be something that you could throw into various dishes, largely adding protein and vitamins (like Niacin) since all of the fats have been removed. Just look for a peanut powder that’s sugar free.

In terms of what Niacin does… My quick read would say that it’s getting in the way of “re-upping” your fat cells. The entire body is constantly being torn away and rebuilt. That’s where they say that, by the five year mark, you effectively have no shared material with the body that you’d had five years earlier.

Triglyceride is broken out of fat cells, delivered to the liver, and there rebuilt into fresh new triglycerides that will go back out to create new, replacement fat cells. Niacin both reduces the speed at which the fat cells are broken up, and the ability for the liver to refashion new triglyceride from the old. While that might not, say, reduce the total amount of fat on your skeleton (i.e. due to it slowing the breakdown process), the slower pace does mean that there’s fewer old triglycerides flowing back to the liver, and fewer new ones coming out of the liver. Overall, your free triglycerides in the blood are reduced.

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**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\
**Post date:** [November 19, 2025, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-diet-for-elevated-triglycerides/1024970/24 "2025-11-19T20:23:24Z")

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I’m going to be really boring and say that of all my numbers, the one that moves around the most is triglycerides, and you might consider ignoring it unless it is elevated the next time you get blood tests.

Fwiw, the one time my triglycerides were really high was when my annual physical was a couple of days after Halloween. I told my doctor that about half my calories over the prior two days had been from milky way bars, and perhaps that wasn’t representative of my typical diet. So we did nothing, and the next year i didn’t see him immediately after Halloween, and everything was normal again.

Anecdotally, “vast amounts of sugar in the prior two days” probably contributed to the high triglycerides.

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