Cholesterol is fat (lipid) that your liver makes at a genetically predetermined rate. Your cholesterol level is what it is mostly because of your genes, and marginally influenced by diet. In fact nothing you eat raises it, but some foods can lower it.
Being fat, it can't be transported in blood (water), so special proteins are made to carry it in plasma. These proteins or lipoproteins package the cholesterol. Depending on their molecular weight, they are called Very Low & Low Density Lipoproteins(LDLs), to High Density Lipoproteins (HDLs).
HDLs transport cholesterol deposits from your artery walls back to the liver for reprocessing, they therefore shrink fatty plaques called Atheromas inside arteries.
How do Atheromas grow? That is where LDLs come in. LDLs or "bad cholesterol" are responsible for laying down fatty (cholesterol) deposits inside arteries.
So sugar in your diet enhances the formation of LDLs
And good fat in the diet (fish oils, nuts, fruit oils, eggs) enhances production of HDLs.
Recently it has been discovered that a diet rich in polyunsaturated fats (canola oil, sunflower oil, and other seed oils) actually contributes to the very vessel injuries that sugar is also implicated in, stimulating more LDLs and thus Atheromas and its vessel hardening atherosclerosis.
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