What are the main factors that lead to increased LDL in the blood?
The two main factors that lead to high blood levels of LDL are genetic inheritance (that is, inheriting from your parents a tendency to high LDL) and eating a diet high in saturated fat. There isn’t much you can do about your genetics, but you can control the amount of saturated fat in your diet. Important sources of saturated fat in the Australian diet include butter, cream, cheese and other full-fat dairy products and the fat associated with meat, especially in sausages, salami and other processed meats. Significant quantities of saturated fat are found in many baked goods (biscuits, cakes, pies, pastries), fried takeaway foods and snack foods (chocolate, potato crisps and extruded cheese flavoured foods). Finally, it should be noted that the ingredient listing vegetable oil on a food label does not necessarily indicate that the oil is low in saturated fat – it may be palm or coconut oil, two vegetable oils that also contain significant amounts of saturated fat. Being overweight and
