And this disease is fueled in large part by poor eating habits, specifically the excess consumption of fat. Although the percentage of daily calories the US population consumes as fat has declined over the last few decades, the actual number of fat grams we eat each day has risen sharply. The reason is that we are consuming more daily calories today than ever before, and this is reflected by our national obesity epidemic. Listen to your wife. How Cholesterol Works.
Cholesterol is vital to all our cells.
It must, therefore, be ferried through the blood to every part of the human anatomy. However, cholesterol is fatty and blood is watery. So, the two don't mix. Therefore, to be shipped through the bloodstream, cholesterol must be chemically packaged into microscopic transporting crafts, called lipoproteins. Lipoproteins come in two types, and each affects our cardiovascular risk in different ways.