How much dietary cholesterol you consume is not something your doctor can know when he or she checks your cholesterol levels. The doctor can’t measure dietary cholesterol any more than he or she can measure how many hot dogs and chicken breasts you’ve been eating. Instead, the doctor measures the amount of cholesterol present in your blood. This second type of cholesterol, blood cholesterol, is made in the liver. Blood cholesterol and dietary cholesterol, although chemically identical, do not represent the same thing. A similar situation occurs with fat. Dietary fat is the stuff you eat: the
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