Cholesterol
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40 free Cholesterol trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Cholesterol has a worse reputation than it deserves. Every animal cell needs it, the body makes most of its own supply, and without it there would be no sex hormones and no way to digest fat. The trouble starts only when too much of the wrong kind circulates for too long, and because that causes no warning signs, millions of people carry a risk they have never been told about. This quiz covers the ground a good doctor's visit would. It asks what LDL and HDL stand for and why one is called good and the other bad, how to read the figures on a lab report and which thresholds matter, and which foods and habits push those figures up or down, including a few with a healthier image than they have earned. There are questions on statins and other treatments, on inherited high cholesterol and the visible signs it leaves, and on the researchers and long-running studies that connected cholesterol to heart disease. It suits anyone who has just had their levels checked and wants to understand the results, nursing and health students revising lipids, and quiz hosts looking for a health round. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which organ, only about 2% of body weight, holds roughly a quarter of all the cholesterol in the human body?
Brain
The brain makes its own supply on site, and most of it is packed into myelin, the fatty insulation wrapped around nerve fibers.
Q 02Which breakfast fruit can push some statins to risky levels in the blood by blocking an enzyme in the gut?
Grapefruit
Grapefruit juice knocks out CYP3A4, an enzyme that normally breaks the drug down, so more of each dose stays in the body for longer.
Q 03Which nutrient does human skin make in sunlight from a close chemical relative of cholesterol?
Vitamin D
Vitamin D starts life as 7-dehydrocholesterol, a compound sitting in the skin that ultraviolet B light converts.
Q 04Which cooking oil, rated healthy by most Americans in one survey, raises harmful LDL about as much as beef fat?
Coconut oil
Coconut oil won a healthy rating from 72% of Americans in that survey, yet only 37% of nutrition experts agreed.
Q 05HDL earns its nickname of 'good' cholesterol by carrying excess cholesterol back to which organ for disposal?
Liver
The liver is also where the journey starts, because LDL particles carry cholesterol out from it to the rest of the body.
Q 06What name, shared with a dental problem, is given to the cholesterol-rich deposits that build up on artery walls?
Plaque
Plaque can break open without warning, and the blood clot that forms on the rupture can block the artery completely.
Q 07Which breakfast grain, the focus of a 1980s bran craze, contains beta-glucan fiber that lowers LDL cholesterol?
Oats
Oats owe the craze to Quaker, which began promoting them as cholesterol-cutting after a 1986 study; FDA rules on such label claims followed in 1997.
Q 08Since high cholesterol usually causes no symptoms, what is the only way to find out you have it?
A blood test
A blood test is the only way to know, and it can be as quick as a finger-prick sample instead of a needle in the arm.
Q 09A chicken egg is rich in cholesterol, but which part of the egg contains all of it?
The yolk
The yolk carries the whole load, while the white is almost entirely water and protein with no cholesterol at all.
Q 10Which nutrient, plentiful in butter and fatty meat, raises LDL more than anything else in the diet?
Saturated fat
Saturated fat outdoes even the cholesterol found in food, so the US government's TLC diet for lowering LDL keeps it under 7% of daily calories.
Q 11Which preparation, lasting 9 to 12 hours, are patients traditionally asked to follow before a cholesterol lipid panel?
Fasting
Fasting means nothing but water, though studies have questioned whether it is needed and some labs now accept samples taken after a meal.
Q 12Besides total cholesterol, LDL and HDL, which fourth figure on a lipid panel measures the most common fat in the body?
Triglycerides
Triglycerides are how the body banks spare calories: whatever you eat but do not need right away is converted and stored in fat cells.
Q 13Below which level, in mg/dL, do US health agencies class an adult's total cholesterol as desirable?
200
200 mg/dL is the line: readings from there up to 239 are labeled borderline high, and 240 or more counts as high.
Q 21Which Pfizer statin became the world's best-selling medicine between 1996 and 2012, earning over $125 billion?
Lipitor
Lipitor, the brand name of atorvastatin, brought in $13 billion a year at its peak, up to a quarter of Pfizer's revenue.
Q 22Which side effect is the complaint most often linked to statins, reported by 10 to 15% of users in studies?
Muscle pain
Muscle pain is usually the whole story: the dangerous muscle breakdown called rhabdomyolysis strikes no more than 1 or 2 users in 10,000 a year.
Q 23Which arteries, named from the Latin for crown, feed the heart muscle and can be narrowed by cholesterol build-up?
Coronary
Coronary arteries earned the name in the 1670s because they surround the heart like a crown.
Q 14Which habit lowers HDL, the 'good' cholesterol, with the effect especially marked in women?
Smoking
Smoking hits from both sides, because it pushes LDL up at the same time as it drags the protective kind down.
Q 15After which stage of life does a woman's risk of high cholesterol rise, as protective hormone levels fall?
Menopause
Menopause reverses an early advantage: between the ages of 20 and 39, men are the ones more likely to have high total cholesterol.
Q 16In LDL and HDL, the so-called bad and good cholesterol, which word does the final L stand for?
Lipoprotein
Lipoprotein particles are parcels of fat and protein, needed because fats must be attached to proteins to travel through the blood.
Q 17The word cholesterol joins the Greek for 'solid' to the Greek name of which digestive fluid?
Bile
Bile is khole in Greek, the same root hiding in melancholy, which literally means an excess of the black kind.
Q 18Cholesterol is the raw material for every steroid hormone, a family that includes which of these?
Cortisol
Cortisol is built from cholesterol in the adrenal glands, and the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone start from it too.
Q 19Cholesterol is a key building block of which structure in animal cells, sparing them the need for rigid walls?
Membrane
The membrane stays stable and durable without turning rigid, which is what lets animal cells change shape and animals move.
Q 20Akira Endo found the first statin, mevastatin, in which kind of organism, also the source of penicillin?
A mold
A mold found in a Kyoto grain shop gave Endo the drug, after he had worked through some 6,000 compounds.
Q 24Xanthelasma, soft yellowish cholesterol deposits under the skin, usually appear on or around which part of the body?
Eyelids
The eyelids are where these flat yellow patches usually sit, and the name xanthelasma comes from the Greek words for yellow and foil.
Q 25An underactive state of which gland, treatable with a daily hormone pill, is a known cause of high cholesterol?
Thyroid
The thyroid can leave its mark even after treatment: cholesterol may stay raised once hormone tests have returned to normal.
Q 26Which Massachusetts community gave its name to the heart study, begun in 1948, that coined the term 'risk factor'?
Framingham
Framingham sent 5,209 adults into the first cohort, and the study is now following a third generation of volunteers.
Q 27In 1913 the Russian pathologist Nikolay Anichkov tied cholesterol to artery disease by feeding it to which animals?
Rabbits
Rabbits on the diet grew artery lesions like those of human disease, a result one researcher wrote could have saved 30 years of argument.
Q 28Cholesterol was first isolated in the 18th century from which hard lumps that can form inside the body?
Gallstones
Gallstones made mainly of cholesterol are still a recognized type, and the attacks they cause often follow a fatty meal.
Q 29Which coffee-making method leaves in cafestol, a compound that raises cholesterol and that paper filters trap?
French press
French press coffee and Turkish coffee carry the most cafestol, while paper-filtered drip coffee keeps only negligible amounts.
Q 30Which plant compounds, added to spreads such as Benecol, lower LDL by blocking cholesterol absorption in the gut?
Stanols
Stanols at 2 to 3 grams a day trim LDL by roughly 10 to 15%, a real effect but far smaller than that of prescription drugs.